MHSJenkins
As a quick semi-aside: 20 years isn't that long in academic research, and it's especially not that long when we're talking about colonialism/post-colonialism. It's a tremendous amount of time in the hard sciences I'm told but it's a mistake to apply that lens here.
My dude, generations historians, economists, and social critics from India and across sub-Saharan Africa have discussed these issues at length. There are libraries full of diverse works on the subject. The erasure of all that is on-brand for the Nobel Prize in Economics (which even Hayek said shouldn't exist in his own acceptance speech) and frankly on-brand for the Western academy as a whole.
I think the important bit is getting lost in the shuffle over particulars: This research and the conclusion it presents are not original to three Western men from a first-world university. They've been discussed and explored at length by the academies of the post-colonial states who are dealing with the aftereffects of their own colonial experiences. This is a Eurocentric/Western-centric move on the part of, frankly, a bunch of privileged and insulated people.
That is not true for the Nobel Prize in Economics, which is not one of the five official Nobel Prizes.
The Swedish government and the Swedish academy are notoriously myopic/tone deaf when it comes to these issues.
Sorry about that, I mistook you for someone else. The Royal Academy of Sciences doesn't administer the Nobel Prize for Economics, which isn't one of the five official Nobel Prizes and thus overseen by a complex mix of the Swedish government--including the Academy of Sciences--and the Sveringes Riksbank.
Oh boy, ethnic prejudice: my own academic researched focused on borders and migration in colonial and post-colonial states and I taught US and World History on both the high school and college level. Race, racism, the Atlantic Slave Trade, and colonialism/post-colonialism pervade all of those subjects and were constants throughout my curriculum.
I will bear all of that in mind. Have a good one. May the Force be with you.
. . . brought to you by some of the same people behind this little gem: https://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151047929/racist-cake-episode-cuts-swedes-the-wrong-way
I think that comment was aimed more at the Nobel Prize in Economics committee--administered and funded by Sweden's Riksbank--but your point does stand.