Best Paper Awards

Best Paper Awards in Public Choice

Each year in the weeks leading up to the annual meetings of the Public Choice Society, the editors of Public Choice select the winners of two awards for the best papers published in the journal during the previous calendar year. The winners are selected by consensus amongst the associate editors and the editor in chief. The awards are announced formally at the Society’s plenary luncheon, at which time the authors are recognized for their contributions to the journal.

The Duncan Black Prize
for Best Paper in Public Choice by a Senior Scholar

$1,000
Sponsored by the Society

Past winners:

  • 2023: Casey Mulligan (University of Chicago), “Beyond Pigou: externalities and civil society in the supply-demand framework” Public Choice 196 (July 2023), 1-18.
  • 2022: Christian Bjornsok (Aarhus University) and Stefan Voigt (University of Hamburg), “Emergencies: on the misuse of government powers” Public Choice 190.1-32 (January 2022)
  • 2021: Jeremy Horpedahl (University of Central Arkansas), “Bootleggers, Baptists and ballots: coalitions in Arkansas’ alcohol-legalization elections.” Public Choice 188 (1–2) (July 2021), 203–219.
  • 2020: Jarosław Flis, Wojciech Słomczyński & Dariusz Stolick (all of Jagiellonian University), “Pot and ladle: a formula for estimating the distribution of seats under the Jefferson–D’Hondt method,” Public Choice 182 (1–2) (January 2020), 201–227.
  • 2019: Abel François (University of Lille) and Olivier Gergaud (KEDGE-Bordeaux Business School), “Is civic duty a solution to the paradox of voting?” Public Choice, 180(3–4), 257–283.
  • 2018: Sean Gailmard (University of California Berkeley) and Jeffrey A. Jenkins (University of Southern California), “Distributive politics and congressional voting: public lands reform during the Jacksonian era,” Public Choice 175(3–4) (June 2018), 259–274.
  • 2017: Gyung-Ho Jeong (University of British Columbia), “The supermajority core of the US Senate and the failure to join the League of Nations,” Public Choice 173(3–4) (December 2017), 325 –343
  • 2016: John Matusaka (University of Southern California), “Ballot-Order Effects in Direct-Democracy Elections”, Public Choice 167(3-4), 257-276
  • 2015: Andrew T. Young (West Virginia University), “From Caesar to Tacitus: changes in early Germanic governance circa 50 BC–50 AD” Public Choice, 164(3–4), 357–378
  • 2014: Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay and Bryan C. McCannon, “The effect of the election of prosecutors on criminal trials,” Public Choice 161(1–2): 141–156.
  • 2013: Ronald W. Batchelder and Nicolas Sanchez, “The encomienda and the optimizing imperialist: an interpretation of Spanish imperialism in the Americas,” Public Choice 156(1–2): 45–60.
  • 2012: Thomas Apolte, “Why is there no revolution in North Korea? The political economy of revolution revisited,” Public Choice 150(3–4): 561–578.
  • 2011: Kai Konrad and Wolfgang Leininger, Self-enforcing norms and efficient cooperative collective action in the provision of public goods, Public Choice 146(3-4): 501-520.
  • 2010: Abhinay Muthoo and Kenneth A. Shepsle, Information, institutions and constitutional arrangements, Public Choice 144(1-2): 1-36.
  • 2009: Thomas Stratmann, How prices matter in politics: the returns to campaign advertising, Public Choice 140(3-4): 357-377.
  • 2008: Kevin B. Grier, US presidential elections and real GDP growth, Public Choice 135(3-4): 337-352.
  • 2007: Keith T. Poole, Changing minds? Not in Congress!, Public Choice, 131(3-4): 435-445.
  • 2006: Ronald Wintrobe, Extremism, suicide terror, and authoritarianism, Public Choice 128(1-2): 168-195.
  • 1990: [Note: The Duncan Black Prize was established in the early 1990s and we are trying to piece together all the awardees and their paper titles.]

The Gordon Tullock Prize
for Best Paper in Public Choice by a Junior Scholar

$1,000
Sponsored by continuing gifts from Springer.

Past winners:

  • 2023: Gavin Roberts (Weber State University) and Rik Chakraborti (Christopher Newport University), “How price-gouging regulation undermined COVID-19 mitigation: county-level evidence of unintended consequences” Public Choice 196 (July 2023), 51-83.
  • 2022: Martin Rode (Universidad de Navarra), “The institutional foundations of surf break governance in Atlantic Europe” Public Choice 190.175-204 (January 2022)
  • 2021: Louis Rouanet (Western Kentucky University), “The interest group origins of the Bank of France.” Public Choice 186 (1–2) (January 2021), 119–140.
  • 2020: Christophe Lévêque (University of Bordeaux), “Political connections, political favoritism and political competition: evidence from the granting of building permits by French mayors,” Public Choice 184(1–2) (July 2020), 135–155
  • 2019: Perry Ferrell (West Virginia University), “Titles for me but not for thee: transitional gains trap of property rights extension in Columbia.” Public Choice, 178(1–2), 95–114.
  • 2018: to Rosolino A. Candela (George Mason University) and Vincent J. Geloso (Bates College), “The lightship in economics,” Public Choice 176(3–4) (September 2018), 479–506
  • 2017: Keith E. Schnakenberg (Washington University in St. Louis), “The downsides of information transmission and voting,” Public Choice 173(1–2) (October 2017), 43–59
  • 2016: Jayme S. Lemke (George Mason University), “Interjurisdictional Competition and the Married Women’s Property Acts”, Public Choice 166(3-4), 291-313
  • 2015: André Schultz and Alexander Libman (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management), “Is there a local knowledge advantage in federations? Evidence from a natural experiment” Public Choice, 162(1–2), 25–42
  • 2014: Mark Koyama, “The law & economics of private prosecutions in Industrial Revolution England,” Public Choice 159(1–2): 277–298 and Emily C. Skarbek “The Chicago Fire of 1871: a bottom-up approach to disaster relief,” Public Choice 160(1–2): 155–180
  • 2013: Adam Martin and Diana Thomas, “Two-tiered political entrepreneurship and the congressional committee system,” Public Choice 154(1–2): 21–37
  • 2012: Michael Ensley, “Incumbent positioning, ideological heterogeneity and mobilization in US House elections,” Public Choice 151(1–2) (April 2012): 43–61.
  • 2011: Michael Peress, Securing the base: electoral competition under variable turnout, Public Choice 148 (1-2): 87-104.
  • 2010: Daniel J. D’Amico, The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece, Public Choice 145(3-4): 461-482.
  • 2009: Yogesh Uppal , The disadvantaged incumbents: estimating incumbency effects in Indian state legislatures, Public Choice 138(1-2): 9-27.
  • 2008: Keith L. Dougherty and Jac C. Heckelman, Voting on slavery at the Constitutional Convention, Public Choice 136(3-4): 293-313.
  • 2007: Justin Buchler, The social sub-optimality of competitive elections, Public Choice, 133(3-4), 439-456.
  • 2006: John-Charles Bradbury and Joseph M. Johnson, Do supermajority rules limit or enhance majority tyranny? Evidence from the US states, 1960-1997, Public Choice 127(3-4): 437-449.
  • 2005: Jac C. Heckelman, A Spatial Model of U.S. Senate Elections, Public Choice 118(1-2): 87-103