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One-handed economists, Nobels and economics as a science

“Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, ‘On the one hand’ and ‘On the other,'” Harry Truman, US president 1945-1953, once said, and Monday’s announcement of what is commonly called the Nobel Prize in Economics raises a perennial question on the claim of economics to be a science. For a start, the announcement on Monday was not on the winner of a Nobel Prize.