IZA Prize in Labor Economics

IZA Prize Medal

The Institute for the Study of Labor awards a prize each year for outstanding academic achievement in the field of labor economics. The IZA Prize in Labor Economics has become a highly prestigious science award in international economics, is the only international science prize awarded exclusively to labor economists and is considered the most important award in labor economics worldwide. The prize was established in 2002 and is awarded annually through a nomination process and decided upon by the IZA Prize Committee, which consists of internationally renowned labor economists. As a part of the prize, all IZA Prize Laureates contribute a volume as an overview of their most significant findings to the IZA Prize in Labor Economics Series published by Oxford University Press.

Funding and prize components

The IZA Prize in Labor Economics consists of a prize medal and a cash award of 50,000 euros. This provides the monetary support for the recipients' past and future research and is meant to stimulate further labor market research.

Nomination and selection process

IZA has a worldwide network of over 1,300 labor economists who collaborate as research fellows with the Institute. Each year they nominate candidates for the IZA Prize in Labor Economics from the research and work of their peers and colleagues. The nominations are reviewed by the IZA Prize Committee, which consists of IZA representatives, Research Fellows and prominent international labor economists.

IZA Prize Committee

Since the establishment of the prize, four Nobel laureates in Economics have served as members of the Prize Committee, George Akerlof, Gary Becker, James Heckman, and Joseph Stiglitz. The committee is coordinated by IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann, who is also Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn, Honorary Professor of Economics at the Free University of Berlin and the Renmin University of Peking, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Population Economics. Current members of the committee besides Akerlof and Zimmermann are: Corrado Giulietti (IZA Director of Research), Richard Portes (Professor of Economics at the London Business School and President of the CEPR), and Rebecca M. Blank (Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison).

IZA Prize in Labor Economics Series

As a part of the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, each Laureate produces a volume for the IZA Prize in Labor Economics Book Series consisting of their most significant findings. The Series covers a broad range of important issues in labor economics. IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann and other IZA experts serve as co-editors for each volume. The series is published by Oxford University Press.

IZA Prize Laureates

The past winners of the IZA Prize include a number of influential labor economists who are active in policy advice. For example, Edward Lazear was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. Alan Krueger was nominated for the same post by President Barack Obama.

Year	Laureate(s)	Affiliation	Book title
2002	Jacob Mincer	Columbia University	The Founding Father of Modern Labor Economics
2003	Orley Ashenfelter	Princeton University	Labor Policy Evaluation and the Design of Natural Experiments (forthcoming)
2004	Edward Lazear	Stanford University	Inside the Firm: Contributions to Personnel Economics
2005	Dale Mortensen Christopher Pissarides	Northwestern University London School of Economics	Job Matching, Wage Dispersion, and Unemployment
2006	David Card Alan B. Krueger	University of California, Berkeley Princeton University	Wages, School Quality, and Employment Demand
2007	Richard B. Freeman	Harvard University and London School of Economics	Making Europe Work (forthcoming)
2008	Richard Layard Stephen Nickell	London School of Economics Nuffield College	Combatting Unemployment
2009	Richard Easterlin	University of Southern California	Happiness, Growth, and the Life Cycle
2010	Francine Blau	Cornell University	Gender and Inequality
2011	George J. Borjas Barry Chiswick	Harvard University George Washington University	Immigration and the Labor Market (forthcoming)
2012	Richard Blundell	University College London	Taxation and Labour Supply (forthcoming)
2013	Daniel S. Hamermesh	University of Texas at Austin and Royal Holloway	Labour Demand (forthcoming)
2014	Gary S. Fields	Cornell University	Employment and Development (forthcoming)
2015	Jan Svejnar	Columbia University	Economics of Transition (forthcoming)

External links

• IZA Prize Homepage
• IZA Prize Series at OUP

• http://institute.eib.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Short-bio-Klaus-F.-Zimmermann.pdf
• http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/prize/prize_committee 30.01.2015