Theorectial hullabaloo and layman's economics

1981 - just after the Nobel prize committee's announcement, people at Yale's economice department arranged a press conference so that the reporters could face that year's Nobel Laureate Prof. James Tobin. For obvious reasons most of the reporters wanted to know what was the acclaimed theory of Prof. Tobin which had brought him "Nobel"! So, Prof. Tobin tried his best to explain everything associated with his much famous "Portfolio Theory". He was under the impression that the brief lecture would convey his message in lay man's language to evryone attending the conference.However, the reporters were not happy and they specifically mentioned "Oh no! please explain it in lay language"....Prof. Tobin though for a while and said "You know, don't put all your eggs in one basket" - that was his everbest try to make people understand the benefits of diversifying assets. Next day almost every newspaper in the world made a headline "Yale economist wins Nobel prize for 'don't pull all your eggs"....one friend of Prof. Tobin even sent him an cartoon from a newspaper which showed a sketch of next year's winner explaining how his award was for "An apple a day keep the doctors away"!

One of my faculty members also told me that same thing happened with Prof. Wassily Leotief who was awarded Nobel prize in 1973 for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems. While attending the royal dinner at Stockholm just after award giving ceremony, one of the fellow winners (I don't know whether he was a Physict or Chemist or Biologist but someone associated with pure science) requested him to explain his work in non-technical language. After Leontief tried to do so, the guy told another fellow winner..."You know..they have awarded him the prize for inverting the matrix".

Well...so you see, being a layman or at least pretending to be a layman is not at all a good strategy for an economist. Jokes apart, it is true that explaining those sophisticated theories in layman language is a difficult job. Nevertheless people often complain that day by day theoretical economics is going beyond the scope of normal comprehensibility. I agree with them - pick up a recent paper on "Social choice theory" or "evolutionary game theory" and even if you have a good background in economics there are high chances that you'll be totally lost in the domain of greek alphabets and uncomprehensible mathematics. But it is normal enough for an ordinary people to get interest (or at least just to be acquainted with)in theories which made Amartya Sen or John Nash media celebrities. We can argue that not everything is for every people in the world - how many of us can actually understand the "quantum theory of optical coherence" which has brought "Nobel" to Harvard physicist Roy Glauber in 2005. But I'll like to remind those people unlike Physics or Chemistry, Economics is a part of social science and that's why common people may want to have a thorough look on some economic theory at first rather than dwelling upon some hi-brow pure science theory. I personally believe that theoretical economists often get the pleasure from writing(publishing) a theory paper which is comparable to the pleasure poets/novelists get from their own creations. Self satisfaction is a keyword in this profession and it helps you to remain enthusiastic with your research.But on the other hand why not we give a try to popularize the "dismal science" - we can always try to make people understand that economics is not just about stocks and bonds and share market...there are something more!! We have some duties to let people know acronyms like GDP and GNP are not the ultimate words in the world of economics...you can explore lot other things...have fun and learn side by side!! A consciousness is needed....and we need it pretty soon.