Your Majesties,Your Royal Highnesses,Ladies and Gentlemen,
The great economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote: “If economists could manage to getthemselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would besplendid.”
83 years and much research later, we would perhaps aspire to be compared with“meteorologists” or “doctors”, whose scientific accomplishments have been truly outstandingand yet have to face challenges that are rather down-to-earth. Our failure to foresee orprevent the financial crisis is a sore reminder of the dangers of hubris. True enough, we hadworked on most of its ingredients. But like a virus that keeps mutating, new dangers emergedwhen we thought we had understood and avoided the existing ones.
The need to be humble applies also to the field that was rewarded by the Prize. Recognizingthat industries are different from each other and evolve rapidly, researchers in industrialorganization have patiently built a body of knowledge that has helped regulators to betterunderstand market power and the effects of policy interventions, and helped firms toformulate their strategies. They have thereby contributed to making this world a better world,the economist’s first mission. Yet, there is so much we still have to learn, and the world changesfaster than our understanding can keep up.
Humility is not easy to preserve when receiving such a prestigious award. Albert Camus in hisacceptance speech wondered how he, rich only in his doubts and his work still in progress,could cope with being at the center of a glaring light. His answer was that he could not livewithout his art. The great French scientist Henri Poincaré described the unmatched pleasure ofdiscovery: “Thought is only a flash in the middle of a long night. But this flash meanseverything.”
Wisdom therefore encourages me to return as soon as possible to my lab, to the colleagues towhom I am indebted for the Prize, in short to the wonderful life of a researcher. But I shall beprofoundly and permanently grateful to the Committee for the immense honor it hasbestowed upon me, and to the Nobel Foundation and Sweden for their astounding mission ofdrawing attention to Science year after year.