The purpose of the ersatz Nobel was to elevate certain strains of economic thought above their competitors; those strains were an Americanized version of Walrasianism and an MPS-inspired neoliberalism. If the two strains found a stilted hybrid at the University of Chicago, then all the better for Chicago and its global reputation. The Swedes were forward-looking, realizing they were intervening to bring about an outcome that had not yet become a global standard: English-inflected American orthodoxy, tricked out to resemble the natural sciences, with a dollop of neoliberal political theory. The American prizes, by contrast, had been sadly backward-looking; therefore, it was the better part of valor to simply retire the Walker medal with little fanfare.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 535