Roberto Alazar? Pasi Kuoppamaki? Richard M. Scammon? Ben Wattenberg? John Kenneth Galbraith? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Economics is a complex and contentious discipline. Sharp disagreements between economists inspired the following quip:
Economics is the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposing things.
Would you please help me to trace this expression?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest close match found by QI appeared in a message posted to the Usenet newsgroup sci.econ in May 1995. No attribution was given for the quip; hence, the creator remains anonymous. The message contained fourteen miscellaneous jokes about economics. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Economics is the only field in which two people can get a Nobel Prize for saying exactly the opposite thing.
Finnish economist Pasi Kuoppamaki replied to this Usenet message by stating that the jokes had been copied from a webpage of economics jokes which he maintained at the website of ETLA – Elinkeinoelämän tutkimuslaitos (Finnish Institute of Business Research). Currently, the webpage does not exist. Kuoppamaki gave this description:2
The collection is a result of contributions from many people round the world (though mostly US) to whom I owe a big thanks.
In November 1995 the “San Francisco Chronicle” of California published a story discussing the webpage of economics jokes maintained by Kuoppamaki. The article reprinted the quip without attribution:3
“Economics is the only field in which two people can get a Nobel Prize for saying exactly the opposite thing.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Economics Is the Only Field in Which Two People Can Get a Nobel Prize for Saying Exactly the Opposite Thing”