Harvard's Roland Fryer Wins John Bates Clark Medal

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Harvard's Roland Fryer Wins John Bates Clark Medal April 24, 2015, 3:06 PM ET Harvard’s Roland Fryer Wins John Bates Clark Medal ByNick Timiraos Harvard professor Roland Fryer, an economist who has done pioneering work on the sources and magnitude of racial inequality, won the John Bates Clark medal, which is given to the most promising American economist under 40 years old. Roland Fryer, a Harvard professor who won this year’s John Bates Clark medal. Harvard University The American Economic Association, which announced the prize on Friday, said Mr. Fryer’s work made him “a major figure in the evaluation of education policies to narrow the racial achievement gap.” Mr. Fryer, 37, founded Harvard’s Education Innovation Laboratory, known as EdLabs, in 2008 and serves as its director. From 2007 to 2008, he served as the chief equality officer for New York City’s Department of Education. In a 2013 paper, Mr. Fryer examined the benefits of high­ achieving charter school that extend beyond the classroom, studying Harlem’s Promise Academy in New York City. Mr. Fryer is the first African­American to win the medal. At 30, he became the youngest African­ American to receive tenure at Harvard. The Clark medal is often referred to as the “Baby Nobel” because many of its winners have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, including Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman. The medal doesn’t come with a monetary prize. It has been awarded every other year since 1947; since 2010, it has been awarded annually. Copyright 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non­commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non­personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1­800­ 843­0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.
Recommended publications
  • Handicapping Economics’ ‘Baby Nobel,’ the Clark Medal - Real Time E
    Handicapping Economics’ ‘Baby Nobel,’ the Clark Medal - Real Time E... http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/04/22/handicapping-economics-ba... More News, Quotes, Companies, Videos SEARCH Thursday, April 22, 2010 As of 4:16 PM EDT BLOGS U.S. Edition Today's Paper Video Blogs Journal Community Log In Home World U.S. Business Markets Tech Personal Finance Life & Style Opinion Careers Real Estate Small Business WSJ BLOGS Reserve Bank of India’s ‘Nirvana’ Rate Economic insight and analysis from The Wall Street Journal. APRIL 22, 2010, 4:04 PM ET Handicapping Economics’ ‘Baby Nobel,’ the Clark Medal Article Comments (1) REAL TIME ECONOMICS HOME PAGE » 1 of 3 4/22/2010 4:20 PM Handicapping Economics’ ‘Baby Nobel,’ the Clark Medal - Real Time E... http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/04/22/handicapping-economics-ba... Email Printer Friendly Permalink Share: facebook Text Size By Justin Lahart Friday, the American Economic Association will present the John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the nation’s most promising economist under the age of 40. The Clark is known as the “Baby Nobel,” and with good reason. Of the 30 economists who have won it, 12 have gone on to win the Nobel, including Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. The award was given biennially until last year, when the AEA decided to give it annually. Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Esther Duflo, 37, is considered a frontrunner. The head of MIT’s Jameel Poverty Action Lab with Abhijit Banerjee, she’s been at the forefront of using randomized experiments to analyze development American Economic Association Most Popular programs.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard T. Ely and Woodrow Wilson at “The Hopkins”
    SUBSCRIBE NOW AND RECEIVE CRISIS AND LEVIATHAN* FREE! “The Independent Review does not accept “The Independent Review is pronouncements of government officials nor the excellent.” conventional wisdom at face value.” —GARY BECKER, Noble Laureate —JOHN R. MACARTHUR, Publisher, Harper’s in Economic Sciences Subscribe to The Independent Review and receive a free book of your choice* such as the 25th Anniversary Edition of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, by Founding Editor Robert Higgs. This quarterly journal, guided by co-editors Christopher J. Coyne, and Michael C. Munger, and Robert M. Whaples offers leading-edge insights on today’s most critical issues in economics, healthcare, education, law, history, political science, philosophy, and sociology. Thought-provoking and educational, The Independent Review is blazing the way toward informed debate! Student? Educator? Journalist? Business or civic leader? Engaged citizen? This journal is for YOU! *Order today for more FREE book options Perfect for students or anyone on the go! The Independent Review is available on mobile devices or tablets: iOS devices, Amazon Kindle Fire, or Android through Magzter. INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE, 100 SWAN WAY, OAKLAND, CA 94621 • 800-927-8733 • [email protected] PROMO CODE IRA1703 The Shaping of a Future President’s Economic Thought Richard T. Ely and Woodrow Wilson at “The Hopkins” F CLIFFORD F. THIES AND GARY M. PECQUET homas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was the first and is still the only president oftheUnitedStatestoholdanearneddoctoraldegree.HisPh.D.wasawarded T by the Johns Hopkins University (“The Hopkins”) in 1886. He was also the president of an institution of higher education and, unique among U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • External Influence As an Indicator of Scholarly Importance
    This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Chan, Ho Fai, Frey, Bruno, Gallus, Jana, Schaffner, Markus, Torgler, Benno,& Whyte, Stephen (2016) External influence as an indicator of scholarly importance. CESifo Economic Studies, 62(1), pp. 170-195. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/84714/ c Consult author(s) regarding copyright matters This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this work infringes copyright please provide details by email to [email protected] Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https://doi.org/10.1093/cesifo/ifv010 External Influence as an Indicator of Scholarly Importance Ho Fai Chan, Bruno S. Frey, Jana Gallus, Markus Schaffner, Benno Torgler, and Stephen Whyte Abstract: Although the external influence of scholars has usually been approximated by publication and citation count, the array of scholarly activities is far more extensive.
    [Show full text]
  • Imperialism, Racism, and Fear of Democracy in Richard Ely's Progressivism
    The Rot at the Heart of American Progressivism: Imperialism, Racism, and Fear of Democracy in Richard Ely's Progressivism Gerald Friedman Department of Economics University of Massachusetts at Amherst November 8, 2015 This is a sketch of my long overdue intellectual biography of Richard Ely. It has been way too long in the making and I have accumulated many more debts than I can acknowledge here. In particular, I am grateful to Katherine Auspitz, James Boyce, Bruce Laurie, Tami Ohler, and Jean-Christian Vinel, and seminar participants at Bard, Paris IV, Paris VII, and the Five College Social History Workshop. I am grateful for research assistance from Daniel McDonald. James Boyce suggested that if I really wanted to write this book then I would have done it already. And Debbie Jacobson encouraged me to prioritize so that I could get it done. 1 The Ely problem and the problem of American progressivism The problem of American Exceptionalism arose in the puzzle of the American progressive movement.1 In the wake of the Revolution, Civil War, Emancipation, and radical Reconstruction, no one would have characterized the United States as a conservative polity. The new Republican party took the United States through bloody war to establish a national government that distributed property to settlers, established a national fiat currency and banking system, a progressive income tax, extensive program of internal improvements and nationally- funded education, and enacted constitutional amendments establishing national citizenship and voting rights for all men, and the uncompensated emancipation of the slave with the abolition of a social system that had dominated a large part of the country.2 Nor were they done.
    [Show full text]
  • John Bates Clark As a Pioneering Neoclassical Economist Thomas C
    “A Certain Rude Honesty”: John Bates Clark as a Pioneering Neoclassical Economist Thomas C. Leonard John Bates Clark (1847–1938), the most eminent American economist of a century ago, was, in his own day, caricatured as an apologist for laissez-faire capitalism (Veblen 1908).1 The caricature has shown stay- ing power, a measure, perhaps, of the relative paucity of scholarship on Clark and his work. Recent Clark research signals a welcome attempt at a more accurate portrait (Morgan 1994; Henry 1995; Persky 2000). But some revisionists would remake Clark the apologist for capital into Clark the Progressive exemplar. Robert Prasch (1998, 2000), for exam- ple, depicts Clark as a Progressive paragon, which groups him with the greatreformers of Progressive-Era politicaleconomy—Social Gospel- ers such as Richard T. Ely and his protégé John R. Commons, labor leg- islation activists such as Clark’s junior colleague Henry Rogers Seager Correspondence may be addressed to Thomas C. Leonard, Department of Economics, Fisher Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; e-mail: [email protected]. I wish to ac- knowledge the gracious hospitality of Rolf Ohlsson and the Department of Economic History at Lund University, Lund, Sweden. This essay benefited from conversations with Benny Carls- son, the comments of Deirdre McCloskey and Bob Goldfarb, and the thoughtful criticisms of two anonymous referees. 1. All successful caricatures contain an element of truth, and Clark surely invited contro- versy when he argued thatworkers paid theirmarginal productgetwhatthey
    [Show full text]
  • To the John Bates Clark Medal Committee
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Torgler, Benno Article Letter to the Editor: To the John Bates Clark Medal Committee Open Economics Provided in Cooperation with: De Gruyter Suggested Citation: Torgler, Benno (2019) : Letter to the Editor: To the John Bates Clark Medal Committee, Open Economics, ISSN 2451-3458, De Gruyter, Warsaw, Vol. 2, Iss. 1, pp. 40-42, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/openec-2019-0004 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/236596 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.econstor.eu Open Economics 2019; 2: 40–42 Letter to the Editor Benno Torgler* To the John Bates Clark Medal Committee¹ https://doi.org/10.1515/openec-2019-0004 Received April 8, 2019; accepted April 26, 2019 Abstract: This humoristic piece pretends to offer a candidacy for the John Bates Clark Medal.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Economic Sciences Laureate
    Joseph E. Stiglitz | October 5, 2012 2001 Nobel Economic Sciences Laureate University Professor, Columbia University Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, the winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2001, and a lead author of the 1995 IPCC report, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank during 1997–2000. Stiglitz received the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded biennially to the American economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the subject. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University, held the Drummond Professorship at All Souls College at the University of Oxford, and has also taught at MIT, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "the economics of information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but also of policy analysts. His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well and how selective government intervention can improve their performance. At Columbia, Stiglitz co-chairs the Committee on Global Thought and is founder and co- president of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. He is also president of the International Economic Association, co-chair of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, and chair of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.
    [Show full text]
  • Department Brochure
    Table of Contents Introduction Recent Developments 4 Department Overview 6 Academic Programs Undergraduate Economics 9 Graduate Economics 11 Fields of Study Economic Theory 13 Macroeconomics 15 International Economics 18 Development Economics 19 Econometrics 21 Industrial Organization and Regulation 23 Labor Economics 25 Environmental Economics Program 26 Public Economics 27 Political Economy 28 Health Economics 28 Organizational Economics 30 Financial Economics 31 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is committed to the principle of equal opportunity in education and employment. The Institute prohibits discrimination against individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, employment policies, scholarship and loan programs, and other Institute administered programs and activities; the Institute may, however, favor US citizens or residents in admissions and financial aid.* The Vice President for Human Resources is designated as the Institute’s Equal Opportunity Officer. Inquiries concerning the Institute’s policies, compliance with applicable laws, statutes, and regulations, and complaints may be directed to Ramona Allen, Vice President for Human Resources, Building NE49-5000, 617-324-5675. In addition, inquiries about Title IX (which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex) may be directed to the Institute’s Title IX Coordinator, Sarah Rankin, Room W31-223, 617-324-7526, [email protected]. Inquiries about the laws and about compliance may also be directed to the United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Region I, 5 Post Office Square, 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02109- 3921, 617-289-0111, [email protected].
    [Show full text]
  • Esther Duflo: 2010 John Bates Clark Medalist
    Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 25, Number 3—Summer 2011—Pages 1–20 Esther Duflo: 2010 John Bates Clark Medalist Christopher Udry sther Duflo, winner of the 2010 John Bates Clark Medal, has made extraor- dinary contributions to development economics. Esther has focused on E topics that many economists think probably are central to understanding the differences in welfare between the high-income and low-income countries of the world: not only education, credit, food, and health, but also more nebulous concepts like social institutions and leadership. She has erected and inspired a research apparatus all over the developing world that seeks to address these ques- tions by integrating large-scale field experiments with economic theory to yield important insights for development policy and our understanding of behavior and institutions in developing countries. She exemplifies and has played a vital role in the exciting renaissance of development economics over the past decade. Esther was born in France, and received her B.A. in history and economics from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1994 and her Masters in Economics from DELTA in 1995. She did her Ph.D. in Economics at MIT, completing her doctorate in 1999. She roiled the economics establishment from the start of her career, with MIT breaking standard practice to offer an assistant professorship to one of its own students. In conversations with her at that time, I had to recognize that my efforts to recruit her to Yale instead were doomed to failure and agree with her reasoning that the environment that she had available to her at MIT was perhaps uniquely well-suited to her vision of the work she planned to do as an economist.
    [Show full text]
  • Lucas Critique After the Crisis: a Historicization and Review of One Theory’S Eminence
    Vol. 7 New School Economic Review 3 Lucas Critique After the Crisis: a Historicization and Review of one Theory’s Eminence By Brandt Weathers Abstract This paper re-examines the Lucas Critique (LC) in light of the 2008 financial crisis and recent scholarship. Inspired by the theoretical reassessments of the Lucas Critique by economists (Anwar Shaikh) and historians (Daniel T. Rodgers), this paper takes on two separate tasks: 1) to understand the historical context that gave rise to Robert Lucas’ infamous 1976 paper now commonly called the ‘Lucas Critique’, and 2) to examine relevant literature (as it addresses issues of theory, policy, and statistical techniques) since the recent US financial crisis to find out if the Lucas Critique has been subject to greater scrutiny in the economics discipline. Using the SSRN database, this paper concludes that little has changed in the perception of the Lucas Critique since 2008; however, a large quantity of associations with the theory that diverge from the content of the paper itself makes clear the need for another project to contextualize the Lucas Critique since its publication (not simply up to its publication, which is performed here). Introduction In early December 1995, University of Chicago Professor Robert Emerson Lucas Jr. was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.1 Besides maybe the John Bates Clark Medal,2 no award honors an economist with such prestige in the popular imagination, likely due to its association with the other renowned Nobel prizes. Here at the event Professor Lars E.O. Svensson of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences introduced Robert E.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Welfare, Redistribution, and the Tradeoff Between Efficiency and Equity, with Developing Country Applications
    Social Welfare, Redistribution, and the Tradeoff between Efficiency and Equity, with Developing Country Applications Jon Bakija Williams College First Draft: August 2012 This Draft: August 2014 Abstract: The economic literature on “optimal income taxation” addresses the question of how to design tax and transfer policy so as to maximize “social welfare,” which is some function of the well- being of all members of society. It clarifies how the social-welfare-maximizing policy depends on one’s philosophy of distributive justice, and on empirical evidence about the behavioral response to incentives, and thus provides a systematic way of evaluating the tradeoff between equity and efficiency. Here, I explain the key insights of the optimal income taxation literature in a way that should be accessible to those with a familiarity with introductory economics, and then provide a brief introduction to some interesting pieces of evidence from around the world that are relevant to this question. 1 I. Social Welfare, the Tradeoff between Equity and Efficiency, and Optimal Income Taxation: Theory Introduction As Arthur Okun (1975) memorably put it, taxing the better-off to finance transfers to the worse- off is like “carrying water in a leaky bucket.” The leak represents the administrative costs of the tax and transfer system, and the deadweight losses caused by the fact that taxes and transfers distort incentives, causing people to change their behavior in an effort to reduce their tax bill or increase the transfer received. Different philosophies of distributive justice lead to different conclusions about how much of a leak we should be willing to accept before we stop carrying further buckets.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Robert Lucas (1967-1981)
    University of Brasilia Economics and Politics Research Group A CNPq-Brazil Research Group http://www.EconPolRG.wordpress.com Research Center on Economics and FinanceCIEF Research Center on Market Regulation–CERME Research Laboratory on Political Behavior, Institutions and Public PolicyLAPCIPP Master’s Program in Public EconomicsMESP Understanding Robert Lucas (1967-1981) Alexandre F. S. Andrada Universidade de Brasília Economics and Politics Working Paper 49/2015 April 15, 2015 Economics and Politics Research Group Working Paper Series Paper presented at the 4th ESHET Latin American Conference. Belo Horizonte – Brazil, November, 2014 _____________________________________________________________________________________ Understanding Robert Lucas (1967-1981) Alexandre F. S. Andrada [email protected] Universidade de Brasília (UnB) _____________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract This paper analyzes Robert Lucas’ contribution to economic theory between 1967 (year of his first solo publication) and 1981 (the year before the emergence of Real Business Cycle approach). The paper has two parts. In the first one, we do a citation analysis, using data from four different sources: Google Scholar, Web of Science, IDEAS RePEc and Jstor. With this data, we answer two questions: what is Lucas most influential papers nowadays? And how this influence changed over the time? We show, for instance, that according to three of those four sources, Lucas’ most influential paper today is not from his business cycle research agenda, which gave him his Nobel Prize. Moreover, it is clear the loss of influence of Lucas’ macroeconomic theory since early 1980s. In the second part, we construct a ranking with the papers Lucas most often used as reference in his paper, and we separate those reference in ‘positive’ and ‘negative’.
    [Show full text]