January 10, 2024

To: Members of the American Economic Association
From: Peter L. Rousseau, Secretary-Treasurer
Subject: AEA Awards Announced at the 2024 ASSA Meeting in San Antonio

The American Economic Association is proud to announce the recipients of the following honors and awards who were recognized at the AEA award ceremonies held during the 2024 ASSA Meeting.

The recipient of the 2023 AEA Distinguished Service Award is Christopher (Kit) Baum, Boston College, for his multi-decade volunteer efforts to promote open-source repositories, transparency, and reproducibility within the profession. Professor Baum established the Statistical Software Components (SSC) archive in 1997 and has been the custodian of this archive ever since. His setting up and maintaining of SSC have made and continue to make an enormous contribution to the empirical research community worldwide and have helped democratize access to methods at the frontier of econometrics. Visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/distinguished-service-award for more information.

The winners of the 2023 AEA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion are the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The award recognizes departments and organizations for outstanding achievement in diversity and inclusion practices.

CEGA has made diversity and inclusion core to its organizational strategy through training scholars from underrepresented groups in rigorous impact evaluation methods and prioritizing diversity and inclusion across its internal processes and structures. The Center understands well the direct link between improving our profession's diversity and inclusion and the development of economic knowledge. 

The economics department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell has deliberately chosen to engage with the problem of underrepresentation of minorities within the economics profession and to operate with an increased awareness of the growing diversity of the students they serve. They pursue the commitment to making their department and the profession welcome to all by systematically mentoring faculty and students, adding content to classes to make the material relevant to the experiences and interests of their students, and actively using AEA resources to increase the knowledge and networks of their students and faculty.

The steps taken by each of these departments to create a more welcoming environment for faculty and students align with the AEA's Best Practices for Economists Building a More Diverse, Inclusive, and Productive Profession. For more information and to read the applications, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/outstanding-achieve-diversity-inclusion.

The recipient of the 2023 AEA Distinguished Economic Education Award is Mark Maier, Glendale Community College. Professor Maier retired from Glendale Community College as Professor of Economics in June 2023. He was the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for five National Science Foundation (NSF) economic education grants totaling more than $1.26 million, including a project developing the widely-recognized Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics online pedagogic portal. He has also led or co-led NSF-funded projects specifically supporting community college economics instructors, with the goals of better integrating these instructors into the AEA’s economic education community, improving overall community college economics instruction, and building community among two-year college economics instructors. Visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/distinguished-economic-education-award for more information.

The 2023 AEA Departmental Seed Grants for Innovation in Diversity and Inclusion were awarded to the Department of Economics at both California State University, Bakersfield, and Loyola Marymount University. The department at California State University, Bakersfield plans a program aimed at drawing students into the discipline, lengthening the pipeline to include high school students studying economics, and offering academic support to ensure student success in economics.  The proposed plan of the department at Loyola Marymount University includes mentoring, research assistant opportunities, educational resources, workshops, and a flexible academic structure. The Association appreciates how both multifaceted programs build on existing AEA programs and resources, include plans for evaluating the success of the programs, and have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion initiatives. The $5,000 grants are awarded to departments to help establish these new programs. For more information, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/csmgep/diversity-initiatives/dept-seed-grants.

The 2023 Professional Development Grant for URM Economists was awarded to Amanda Awadey from Mount Holyoke College, whose essay talked about her research on the effects of a doubling in high school graduation cohort size in Ghana on the demand for college education. The $2,000 grant is awarded to a junior URM economist based on an essay about how their research relates to economics education. The AEA is proud to partner with Pearson Education on this important initiative. For more information, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/csmgep/diversity-initiatives/urm-professional-development-grant.

The 2023 Andrew Brimmer Undergraduate Essay Prize winner is Meshach Melton at Valparaiso University. His essay “The Importance of Arts Education” shows that policy decisions have led to a decline in arts education funding, which in turn has led to a significant reduction in arts programming, especially impacting disadvantaged and minority children. The Association recognizes Melton for his achievement with a $1,000 prize from an anonymous donor.  For more information about the essay prize, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/brimmer-undergrad-essay-prize.

The recipients of the 2023 CSQIEP Award for Outstanding Research Paper in LGBTQ+ Economics are Travis Campbell, Southern Oregon University, and Yana Rodgers, Rutgers University, for their paper entitled “Conversion Therapy, Suicidality, and Running Away: An Analysis of Transgender Youth in the U.S.” This award is given for the best published economics research paper in LGBTQ+ Economics. For more information, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/aealgbtq/csqiep-award.

The 2023 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award recipient is Kaye Husbands Fealing, Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Professor of Public Policy. Her exemplary career demonstrates her versatility as an economist, academic leader, and champion of diversity in STEM fields.  Her research has encompassed the study of the science of science and innovation policy, the public value of research expenditures, and the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM fields and the STEM workforce.  For more information about the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award and for the full prize announcement, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/cswep/awards/bell.

The recipient of the 2023 Elaine Bennett Research Prize is Maya Rossin-Slater, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.  Her research centers on understanding the causal impacts of public policies and other factors on the well-being of families with children, focusing on identifying what works to improve the outcomes of disadvantaged populations and reduce socioeconomic inequality and health disparities. Established in 1998, the Elaine Bennett Research Prize recognizes and honors outstanding research in any field of economics by a woman not more than seven years beyond her Ph.D. For more information about the Elaine Bennett Research Prize and for the full prize announcement, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/cswep/awards/bennett.

In addition to the above awards, the 2023 John Bates Clark Medalist Gabriel Zucman, Distinguished Fellows Guillermo Calvo, Drew Fudenberg, Olivia Mitchell, and Maurice Obstfeld, Foreign Honorary Members Manuel Arellano, Mathias Dewatripont, Eduardo Engel, Sergei Guriev, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya and the AEJ Best Paper Award winners were recognized. These awards were announced in April as part of the Spring awards cycle. Visit https://www.aeaweb.org/news/press-release-awards-2023 for the announcement of these awards.

Please join the AEA in congratulating all these winners for their contributions to the economics profession. To view the 2024 AEA Awards ceremonies, visit 2024 AEA Excellence Awards and  AEA 2024 Awards Ceremony. For more information on these awards and others, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards.