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DEFINING EXCELLENCE: SEVENTY YEARS OF THE JOHN BATES CLARK MEDAL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2020

Beatrice Cherrier  and
Andrej Svorenčík
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Abstract

Before the John Bates Clark Medal (JBCM) had become a widely acknowledged professional and public marker of excellence in economics research, in the first twenty years since its inception more than seventy years ago in 1947, it was almost discontinued three times and once even not conferred. These controversies derived from the fact that the medal was originally established to showcase the expertise of economists to other scientists, policy-makers, and the wider public. While earlier awards were given to theorists, in later years empirical and policy-oriented economists gained ground, reflecting how such research became more prestigious in economics. Based on a quantitative analysis of the forty medalists so far, we show that this empirical shift was concomitant with a decrease in the diversity and an increase in concentration of laureates: twenty-four or twenty-five out of forty awardees received their PhD degree or worked at Harvard, MIT, or Chicago at the time of being awarded.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 153 - 176
Copyright
© The History of Economics Society 2020

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Footnotes

Beatrice Cherrier, CNRS & THEMA, Cergy University, beatrice.cherrier@gmail.com. Andrej Svorenčík, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics, L7, 3-5, 68161 Mannheim, svorencik@uni-mannheim.de. The authors would like to thank the archivists of the Rubinstein Library, Duke University, and Erich Pinzon-Fuchs for their help with retrieving relevant archival materials. We also thank Pedro Duarte, Roger Backhouse, Steven Medema, David Warsh, participants of the session “Merit & Privilege in Economics” at the 2017 AEA meetings in Chicago, Marianne Betrand and John J. Siegfried in particular, as well as two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments and suggestions. Cherrier acknowledges financial support from INET for this research. The usual caveats apply.

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