<< the Nobel prize is awarded not for solving some pernicious technical
problems, but because the solutions re-affirm conventional values or save
politically correct theories from empirical refutation.
To be sure, this problem is not limited to the Nobel prize in economics,
but to Nobel prize in general. >>
Sure. Einstein got his Nobel not for special or general relativity, revolutionary theories, but for the Brownian motion paper, high-order "normal" science that proved empirically what everyone had knwon for thousands of years, that there are atoms. --jks