Economics: The John Bates Clark Medal goes to Roland Fryer | The Economist 4/28/15 1:13 PM
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Apr 27th 2015, 14:41 BY C.R. | LONDON Tweet Advertisement
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/economics Page 1 of 8 Economics: The John Bates Clark Medal goes to Roland Fryer | The Economist 4/28/15 1:13 PM
ON APRIL 24th the American Economic Association (AEA) announced that it would award this year's John Bates Clark Medal to Roland Fryer (pictured) of Harvard University. The professional body for academic economists gives out the prize each year to the "American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge". This year's prize was given to Mr Fryer, a 37-year-old, for his innovative work on economics, education and racial inequality. As the AEA notes on its website:
His innovative and creative research contributions have deepened our “ understanding of the sources, magnitude, and persistence of U.S. racial inequality. He has made substantial progress in evaluating the policies that work and do not work to improve the educational outcomes and economic opportunities of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. His theoretical and empirical work on the “acting KAL draws: Economics A-Z white” hypothesis of peer effects provides new insights into the difficulties of increasing the educational investments of minorities and the socially excluded. Fryer is the leading economist working on the economics of race and education, and he has produced the most important work in recent years on combating the racial divide, one of America’s most profound and long-lasting social problems.
He has mastered tools from many disciplines to tackle difficult research topics. Fryer has developed and implemented compelling randomized field experiments in large U.S. urban school districts to evaluate education interventions. He founded EdLabs (the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University) in 2008 to facilitate such efforts and continues as its director. He has incorporated insights from psychology to formulate a new model of discrimination based on categorization, and he has used detailed historical archival research to understand the origins and spread of the Ku Klux Klan. ” Follow The Economist The award does not come as a complete surprise. Mr Fryer's work is widely lauded; The Economist included him on our list of the eight brightest young economists back in 2008. (Four have gone on to win the Clark Medal.)
Mr Fryer's prize nonetheless stands out. Top academic economists tend to be white.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/economics Page 2 of 8 Economics: The John Bates Clark Medal goes to Roland Fryer | The Economist 4/28/15 1:13 PM
They often hail from privileged backgrounds and build their reputation on inscrutable Latest updates » econometrics. Mr Fryer does not fit that mould. He is the first African-American to win the medal (after having in 2007 become the youngest African-American to receive tenure at In the pub with Nigel Farage: There may Harvard, at age 30). Mr Fryer's childhood was not an easy one. He grew up poor, and be trouble ahead was abandoned by his mother and beaten by his father as a child. As a teenager he Britain | 36 mins ago survived by selling counterfeit handbags and dealing marijuana. Perhaps not coincidentally, his research agenda is heavily focused on investigations of real world Britain's election campaign: April 28th: Ed Miliband’s borderline case policy questions. Mr Fryer has used economic tools to study America's racial divide and Britain | 40 mins ago to explore how it might be narrowed—economic questions that historically have been understudied. Economics, as a field, seems slow to appreciate the possibility that the Economist Radio: Britain’s election: The introduction of new perspectives can mean that more interesting questions get asked, bigger picture leading to better answers. Britain | 1 hour 4 mins ago
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guest-sslaeia Apr 28th, 06:47 Democracy in America | American politics Erasmus | Religion and public policy Free exchange | Economics He becomes a source of inspiration for many disadvantaged minorities from the west as well back- Game theory | Sports warded south. Graphic detail | Charts, maps and infographics Gulliver | Business travel Report Permalink Recommend 3 Reply Prospero | Books, arts and culture The Economist explains | Explaining the world, daily
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Products and events Read Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux. Especially the part on Malawi....All the South Asians were kicked out and now there are no stores. Why? Adding figures is what Asians do it is beneath Have you listened to The Economist Radio on Malawians--direct quote from their prime minister. So taking inventory is out thus commerce beyond Facebook? selling bananas is probably out...Mr. Fryer might take his sabbatical there to figure out how whites The Economist Radio is an on-demand social and asians caused it all. That should be good for a nobel prize. listening platform that allows you to listen, share and recommend The Economist audio content Recommend 8 Report Permalink Reply
Test your EQ Take our weekly news quiz to stay on top of the YoungWeber in reply to hum.... Apr 28th, 08:27 headlines
Want more from The Economist? You have ready comment under one name; why do you need to comment again? We get it you Visit The Economist e-store and you’ll find a range of are gay and racist; you hate Blacks because they did not support your butt humping when you carefully selected products for business and were in Africa. pleasure, Economist books and diaries, and much
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guest-iwaamij in reply to YoungWeber Apr 28th, 09:23
The perpetual grad student! Who hasn't been within 10,000 km of Africa. What is your cerebral subject? Is it Polysci or Geography? Lower (middle?) class striving to be more yuppie wannabe. One question are you? african american? I hope not because you really seem thick headed. Why the touchiness? Is it racist to tire of the endless blame victim politics?
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/economics Page 4 of 8 Economics: The John Bates Clark Medal goes to Roland Fryer | The Economist 4/28/15 1:13 PM
edwardong Apr 28th, 01:14
The dismal science.
I rather suspect that if one spent less time trying to analyse and blame race (or rather the other races); and more time trying to up one's own game (e.g. the Jews), one would have a much better outcome.
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guest-iwaamij Apr 27th, 21:49
Another darling of the liberal PC agenda. Here is my dream:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where african americans stop looking for excuses and blaming everyone else for their problems and look squarely at themselves for the answers."
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YoungWeber in reply to guest-iwaamij Apr 28th, 08:26
Aren't you the old racist gay Hispanic guy from the "Policing Ferguson" article a few month back?
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P Dunbar Apr 27th, 21:33
"Mr Fryer has used economic tools to study America's racial divide and to explore how it might be narrowed—economic questions that historically have been understudied."
It isn't that the field has been understudied but rather that the conclusive results from contemporary and longitudinal studies have been ignored or buried for they are lightning rods for any person proposing the solutions. That is, they are politically incorrect and incentives instead point to spurious contraptions.
Kudos and good luck to the professor in proposing his ideas. While they are unlikely to be new, they may still merit implementation.
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Staight_Arrow Apr 27th, 20:33
"Economics, as a field, seems slow to appreciate the possibility that the introduction of new perspectives can mean that more interesting questions get asked, leading to better answers."
Forgive me for raining on your parade, but wouldn't "behavior economics" fall within the realm of "Socialogy"? Is the discipline of Economics so moribund that it needs to wander off into other disciplines? Or is it the fact that the current discipline has so failed to understand and describe the world we live in that it longs for something easier to sink it's teeth into?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/economics Page 5 of 8 Economics: The John Bates Clark Medal goes to Roland Fryer | The Economist 4/28/15 1:13 PM
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YoungWeber in reply to Staight_Arrow Apr 27th, 21:27
Economists has addressed individual "behavior" since the time of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations"; the entire book is argument about how individual's "rational self interest" and "division of labor" produce greater "common wealth". It is rather late, after the 1860s, that economist become overwhelming focused on "macro-level trends" like balance of trade, money supply, and capital theory.
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P Dunbar in reply to Staight_Arrow Apr 28th, 04:04
In the words of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.'s Vice-Chairman Charlie Munger, "behavioral economics" is redundant. If economics isn't about behavior then what is it about?
As he asserts, the discipline's pendulum has swung too far with physics envy.
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YoungWeber Apr 27th, 16:43
Congratulations to Dr. Fryer; I looked carefully at his work over the years, it is heavily in the vain of "behavior economics" and insightful in regards to those matters.
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brian t. raven in reply to YoungWeber Apr 27th, 18:11
The full impact of Dr. Fryer's studies will not be felt for some time, but his stature will continue to grow. The AEA made an excellent choice this year.
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Connect The Dots Apr 27th, 16:36
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
===
IS studying color exploiting the color divide and perpetuating it, or confronting it on both sides and working to end it forever.
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YoungWeber in reply to Connect The Dots Apr 27th, 16:52
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/economics Page 6 of 8 Economics: The John Bates Clark Medal goes to Roland Fryer | The Economist 4/28/15 1:13 PM
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
" The evils exposed in the cahiers were not accidents of the age, but the bequest of malignant forces at work for centuries"
- Lord Acton
That was never going to happen; not in American, not in Western civilization. The fundamental and founding principal of America, in fact, is the subjugation of non-Whites for advancement of Whites (of all social backgrounds); the works of Senator John C. Calhoun(South Carolina) most clearly illustrate this point. To study how the a system of political economy that favored Whites (from the Wagner Act, Social Security Act, FHA, GI, Medicate & Medicaid, etc) was created and evolved is not "exploitation", but scholarship.
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Poster134 in reply to YoungWeber Apr 27th, 17:49
America has always been a multi-faceted place. We have had our Calhouns and our Klansmen, but we have also had people like Charles Sumner. Here is my favorite part from his speech against slavery in Kansas in 1856:
"The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him, -- though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight: I mean the harlot Slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench Dulcinea del Toboso is all surpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the Slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, he misnames Equality under the Constitution, -- in other words, the full power in the National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction-block, -- then, Sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted Senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus!"
You can sense the dripping sarcasm. Here is a link to the whole speech if you are interested.
http://static.sewanee.edu/faculty/willis/Civil_War/documents/Crime.html
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