The [Nobel] economics prize has occupied a slightly anomalous, occasionally precarious position in the glittering pantheon of Nobel Prizes. The prize was tacked on to the original awards in 1969 as a marketing ploy on behalf of Sweden's central bank. It is the only Nobel that was not stipulated in the will of the dynamite magnate Alfred Nobel, which created the prizes after his death in 1895.
... the prize in economics — officially the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — has long been disdained by other laureates. Murray Gell-Mann, who won his Nobel in physics the year that economists were first honored, said he shocked a colleague when he mentioned the two winners of the economics prize while describing the awards ceremony. "You mean," the colleague said, aghast, "they sat on the platform with you?"
[See http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/13/business/13PRIZ.html]
Carl
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