The role of prizes deserves to be taken more seriously in an expansive social epistemology. Prizes serve to inform and structure the internal dynamics of an intellectual field like economics; and equally, they play an important part in the validation of the doctrines of the field amongst the larger public. But in this case, there is a further consideration that is frequently overlooked. Because epistemology is so very central to neoliberalism, they were well poised to take advantage of the opportunity created by the rogue behavior of the Bank of Sweden to upgrade their standing in the postwar economics profession, through occupation of the newly formed Prize committee, and the elevation of MPS members to the exalted status of ‘winners of the Nobel Prize’.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 536