Profiling Prof. Susan Athey

While the conventional view is that the ultimate prize for a professional economist is to receive the Nobel prize in Economic Sciences. A strong alternative view is that the John Bates Clark Medal awarded biennially to an American economist under the age of 40 years is the superior prize. The limitation of the John Bates Clark Medal to US economists ensures that it is an exclusive prize to which an economist has only a moderately-sized window for eligibility. The Nobel Prize on the other hand appears to award a lifetime's work and the recipients are often middle-aged or older professionals. Professional economists in the US are so accomplished and are demonstrably ahead of the rest of the world that winning the John Bates Clark Medal has become a predictor for winning the Nobel subsequently.

Both prizes have been awarded for more than a generation but have never been awarded to professional female economists. This is bound to change now since Prof. Susan Athey was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal for 2007. This blogger has not read much of her work but this summary by Joshua Gans shows that we may do well to place bets on her being the first woman to win the Nobel too. I undertake to summarize her work on industrial economics in the near future because her credentials in economic theory and its applications in empirical economics are extremely solid.