Saturday, August 20, 2011

Do we need awards in Economics?

I do not like awards. They always create jealousies, and one cannot help that whenever a committee is involved, something may not have gone right. I am thus quite happy that economists give very few awards. It makes their CVs look bad compared to other scientists, but that is the price for a relative peace in the profession.

But we still have some prizes. The Nobel one, which is not really part of the Nobel family but is still attributed much prestige is always under much scrutiny. And in the end, the right people tend to win it. There have been a few controversial cases, Myrdal, Hayek, Buchanan and Ostrom come to mind as example where quite a few eyebrows were raised, but overall this award works well.

The American Economic Association gives an award that is considered to be even more difficult to get than the Nobel Prize: the Clark Medal, given to an American aged under 40. It is difficult to get because only one is awarded every year (no joint winners) and until recently it was given every second year. When comparing to the Nobel Prize, it is relevant to understand that American get a vast majority of them.

Now let us have a look at the past few year for the Clark award:
2011: Jonathan Levin, PhD MIT, Faculty at Stanford
2010: Esther Duflo, PhD MIT, Faculty at MIT
2009: Emmanuel Saez, PhD MIT, Faculty Harvard then Berkeley
2007: Susan Athey, PhD Stanford, Faculty at MIT then Stanford and Harvard
2005: Daron Acemoglu, PhD LSE, Faculty at MIT
2003: Steven Levitt, PhD MIT, Fellow at Harvard then faculty at Chicago
2001: Matthew Rabin, PhD MIT, Faculty at Berkeley
1999: Andrei Shleifer, PhD MIT, Faculty at Princeton, Chicago and Harvard

Do you see a pattern? Well I do, and others have, too. I am not saying these awardees are not bright and promising economists, but is there really no other qualifying economists that could have received it? Of course, John List comes to mind, who has no connection with MIT (or Harvard). But it actually worse than that. The award is given by a small committee, designated by the AEA. The AEA leadership is stacked with people with MIT and Harvard connections, so they also nominate their friends to the various committees, and you see the result.

It is even worse. In 2010, Ester Duflo was considered to be in the pool of strong candidates for the award. Guess who was on the awarding committee? Abhijit Banerjee, her PhD advisor, frequent co-author and colleague at MIT. In such a situation, an ethical person would decline the invitation to serve on the committee. That does not seem to have crossed the mind of Banerjee, who may be used to this cronyism.

There is another award, this time given by the European Economic Association: the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, to an European economist under age 45. It is given every two years, but can have several recipients. This awards has looked much cleaner because the committees and awardees have been distributed all over Europe. Europeans are indeed very sensitive to this. The last one was a shocker, though. Armin Falk won it to the surprise of many. And guess who chaired the awarding committee? His advisor, Ernst Fehr. Again, ethics would have indicated that if Falk had a chance of winning it, Fehr should have recused himself not just from chairing the committee, but from participating in it. In retrospect, this is not Fehr's first wrongdoing: two years earlier he was also on the committee when Fabrizio Zilibotti co-won the award. Zilibotti is a colleague of Fehr in Zurich.

I think we should do away with these two awards. It simply does not work.

21 comments:

  1. I have known Bruno Frey for some time. I have recently met Ernst Fehr. They are both as slick and sleazy in a way that makes my skin crawl. They are so sure of themselves that they never can be wrong, even when one points out the obvious.

    I am very happy you are taking the initiative to point out their wrongdoings.

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  2. What does Bruno Frey have to do with this?

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  3. Economic Logician has previously discussed self-plagiarism by Frey.

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  4. I agree with EL. But there are many such examples. Take the ERC grants. For example, Falk und Fuchs-Schundeln obviously got ERC grants only because of their connections, while others such as Jehiel and Moldovanu clearly deserved their grants because of the quality of their research.

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  5. The Clark Medal went annual frequency precisely because of the uproar that obvious choices like John List had been missed. But it does not seem to have changed the pattern, though.

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  6. Do you actually know how the selection process works? How do you not know it is not like NIH reviews where persons on the evaluating committee who have conflicts of interest leave the room for the discussion of certain candidates?

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  7. No, I am not familiar with the internal procedures for these awards. But the appearances are damning. When one of your students is among the potential winners of the award, you do not serve on that committee. There is no excuse.

    Cronyism for grants is rampant everywhere and in every field. These awards, because they are so rare and prestigious, should be above that.

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  8. There is also a persistent rumor that Banerjee and Duflo are a couple. This may not have been true at the time of the award, though.

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  9. I am personally offended by the allegations made here. It is a fact that the MIT Economics PhD program is the best in the world. To convince yourself, apart from all the awards former students get, check out the placement record in the top 2 departments, how frequently they publish in top journals like the QJE and how many of them are fellows of the NBER. No other program comes close.

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  10. Banerjee and Duflo as a couple is no rumor. It's a fact now and was then.

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  11. EL is spot on. Athey won the award while Manski, coauthor of she and her husband sat on the committee and one of her mentors Poterba was the head of the committee. That is only the beginning.

    List got royally screwed. At least they did something about it by making the award annual.

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  12. Looks like you can't be a woman, win an award, and not be faced with gossip on your sexual relations. Maybe you could write a post on misogyny in the economics profession?

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  13. Ester (Duflo?),this post is not only about you...

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  14. List did not get screwed. He should never have been considered.

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  15. No other discipline has the power concentration displayed by economics. Compare with the affiliation dispersion of the leading journals in physics, psychology, politics....whatever.

    By the way, I have been on many committees where people step out of the room while a case they have a personal interest in is discussed. Their absence is the elephant in the room.

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  16. Somehow I think Esther Duflo would have spelt her own name correctly.

    Also, when the charge is nepotism, arguing that MIT is the best because it wins all the awards, gets all the best jobs and has the most top publications doesn't help your case. (note that I am not implying that it hurts your case, it just doesn't help)

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  17. I was at the award ceremony for Armin Falk. I noticed quite a few people who were not applauding.

    In his speech, Falk did not thank Fehr by name, although it was quite obvious he was solely responsible for him getting the prize.

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  18. ... first thing which came to my mind when it was mentioned that Fehr was in the committee, is that Falk will get the award.

    Armin Falk certainly deserves this ward, still the Economic logician definitely has a point!

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  19. Falk certainly did not deserve the award.

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  20. As a young economist myself I feel that it might be a good time to rethink prizes particularly in light of the comments presented above. First, there does appear to be institutional nepotism in awards. Second, there seems to be a total lack of ethics on the part of our community which is very disturbing and upsetting to young people like me. As pointed out earlier the case of Banerjee and Duflo is really depressing. While no one cares who is in a relationship with whom, it matters if the nominator/recommendation letter writer is in a sexual relationship with the candidate. This is a serious conflict of interest. Why does our community tolerate this kind of unethical behavior? The problem is that it takes away from the respect we can hold both parties in in such a situation. Is this why Duflo has all the prizes? Why cannot some senior folks police this kind of behavior? Is this the only way that women can still make it to the top? If so, its really disappointing. Banerjee needs to make sure that he does not nominate or write letters for Duflo and needs to excuse himself from any prize committees that he is on where she is being considered as he is in relationship with her. I really hope that prize committees get their act together and become more careful and ethical. If they cannot, we should simply get rid of prizes as they are meaningless. This is not about misogyny alone, this is about ethics people.

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  21. You can add a new data point for the JBC medal:

    2012 Amy Finkelstein, Phd at MIT, Faculty at MIT

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