Social Policy Bonds blog: The Nobel Prize

03 September 2022

The Nobel Prize

No, Social Policy Bonds are unlikely to win a Nobel Prize nor any major prize, despite the anonymous comment in this newspaper article (pdf), and their mention in Robert Shiller's 2013 Nobel Prize lecture (pdf, page 489). Why not? There may be other reasons but the two that come to mind are:

Social Policy Bonds do not originate in a member of an esteemed institution; and
Only the non-tradeable variant has actually been issued.

The non-tradeable variant, also known as Social Impact Bond, pay-for-success bond, or social benefit bond, with which I've had no direct involvement, is currently deployed in about 25 countries, with varying levels of success. As I explain here and here, I'm ambivalent about them, and I still hope that one day my original conception will become manifest and help solve our long-term, seemingly intractable, large-scale social and environmental problems.

In the meantime, I've added a Donate link in the right-hand column, in an effort to keep my SocialGoals.com site online, and to help pay my other expenses.

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

13 June 2018: my short article Make Social Impact Bonds Tradeable, appears on the website of Alliance, a magazine for philanthropy and social investment.

25 May 2018: a short article on Social Policy Bonds and their possible application in India, appears on Market Express (India). It is by Dr Ashok V Desai and titled Incentivizing welfare.

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.

18 April 2012: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, mentions Social Policy Bonds in his new book Finance and the Good Society. He also mentions the concept in a Huffington Post article. It's the eighth of his Ten Ways Finance Can Be a Force for Good in Society, and is also mentioned in a short profile piece about Professor Shiller.