In the letters page of The Economist of the 4th November, Professor Richard Norgaard speculates as to why Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel peace prize rather than the economics prize:
“Perhaps the Nobel peace prize selection committee took so long because they thought someone ought to make the award given the economics committee hadn’t done so. It would be nice if the Nobel economics prize occasionally went to a practitioner instead of only theorists who impress other theorists.”
An alternative suggestion would be that the Grameen bank is a large capitalist organisation predicated on a rule that the science of economics absolutely will not accept: that the revenues of small businesses, hence businesses in competition, tend to be enough to cover materials and labour but not the cost of capital.
"...from a theoretical point of view any business firm, a mom and pop grocery store for example, is a market failure. The business firm has a technical description in modern economics: it's a local solution to market imperfections when the transaction costs are too high. In ordinary language, the firm is a market imperfection because it is administering economic interactions internally, and not through the market. When you go from a mom and pop grocery store to General Electric, you're talking about an enormous market imperfection. And it's a recognition by the capitalists themselves that the markets are simply too destructive to function..."
Chomsky 2003? interview, introduction to Anton Pannekoek's Workers' Councils
Posted by: v | April 09, 2007 at 08:45 PM