Young Scholar STOREP 2015 Prize

The Young Scholar STOREP 2015 prize is awarded to

CLÉO CHASSONNÉRY-ZAÏGOUCHE

author of:

“Crossing Boundaries, Displacing Previous Knowledge and Claiming Superiority: Is the Economics of Discrimination a Conquest of Economics Imperialism?”

Motivation

With the intention of investigating the shifting boundaries of economics (the main theme of the STOREP 2015 conference), Chassonery-Zaigouche’s paper addresses the question of “economics imperialism”, that is the expansion of economics in territories that are occupied by disciplines other than economics, by analizing, as case study, the economics of discrimination.

The author’s ambitious aim is to demonstrate that economics imperialism is an ex post reconstruction of a movement closely related to the change in orthodoxy within economics. The paper provides useful insights, in particular, into Becker’s economics of discrimination (which the author sees as a kind of “internal” imperialism), Arrow’s statistical discrimination (as a humble theoretical imperialism), and finally on the empirical analysis of discrimination as “empirical imperialism” in terms of standing.

In line with the aims of the conference, therefore, the paper induces readers to rethink about the status of economics as social science. Based on criteria such as originality of content, analysis of the state of the art and literature, accuracy and clarity of exposition, the article deserves the Young Scholar 2015 prize assigned by STOREP and generously offered by Banca Patrimoni Sella & C.