The paper of the month: October, 2020

Cherrier, B. – Svorenčík, A. (2020): Defining excellence. Seventy years of the John Bates Clark medal. In: Journal of the History of Economic Thought. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837219000300

It is always a pleasure to read pieces in the history of economics that are on the cutting edge as for research methods. This paper is built on the empirical survey of some AEA archival materials to understand the biases involved in the decision making behind the John Bates Clark Medal. The authors aptly point out that there are multiple distortions: one in gender, and one in institutions. As the JBC Medal is supposed to be the ‘baby Nobel prize’, no wonder that we find the same insitutions dominating the field.