Sveriges Riksbank

Diary Entry: March 25, 2025

I’m sitting here thinking about that famous Chicago dinner. My professor called them “Nobel prize-winning brains” — Coase, Stigler, Friedman, all of them. It’s a key part of the story, the thing that gives it so much authority.

But a random thought just hit me. When did they all win? I started looking up the dates, and...

Wait a second.

The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences didn’t even exist in 1960.

I’m serious. I just looked it up. The prize (which is technically the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”) was established in 1968. The first one was awarded in 1969. The official designation names Sveriges Riksbank rather than simply the Swedish Central Bank, presumably lending it greater scientific authority.

When Coase had that famous dinner, when he supposedly “convinced” all those “Nobel prize-winning brains,” none of them were Nobel laureates. The prize they would all eventually win didn’t even exist.

This feels... weird. Why does everyone tell the story that way? It’s like they’re retroactively adding authority to it.

And who are these people? The more I look, the smaller the circle gets. It’s not just a collection of independent scholars; it’s a tight-knit group.

That’s when I found the other connection. I was digging into the people at that dinner and the key players in the “Chicago School.” Aaron Director was a major figure. And who was he? Milton Friedman’s brother-in-law. Friedman was married to his sister, Rose Director. I saw Friedman and Rose on his autobiography cover, with Friedman towering over her.

So, at the center of this “revolution,” you have Friedman, his best friend George Stigler, and his brother-in-law Aaron Director, who all formed a powerful tripartite intellectual relationship. And Coase is right there with them, publishing in their journal.

It feels less like a group of independent geniuses and more like... a club. An extremely exclusive club.

I also have this vague memory of reading somewhere — maybe in Friedman’s autobiography? — that one of his former students ended up on the Nobel prize jury or something. I can’t find the source for it now, so maybe I’m misremembering, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

It’s just one interconnected group. They all taught each other, cited each other, edited each other’s journals, and then, after the prize was created, they all... won it.

I don’t know what this means, but it feels... off. It’s another layer of myth-making.