Leading House Best Paper Award

The Award aims to honour the best published paper in a refereed journal on a topic related to the Leading House VPET-ECON. Two additional prizes are awarded as runner-up prizes. The reputation of the journal is considered as one of the main factors for awarding the prize.

Eligible for the award are all papers published in a journal in 2024 that are authored or co-authored by a person working in the Leading House or at one of the two chairs of the Leading House Directors. Additionally, papers of PhD-students admitted to the Leading House Course Programme and presenting in the Friday Lunch Talk on VPET Economics are also eligible. Eligible papers must have been published in the Leading House Working Paper Series until one year after employment at one of the Leading House chairs has ended, or for external PhD-students until one year after the Course Programme or PhD is finished.

The jury awarding the Leading House Best Paper Awards consists of the members of the Advisory Board of the Leading House.

Award Announcement 2024 (PDF, 228 KB)

We congratulate the winner of the Leading House Best Paper Award 2024, Damiano Pregaldini, for his paper How middle-skilled workers adjust to immigration: the role of occupational skill specificity (co-authored with Uschi Backes-Gellner), published in International Journal of Manpower in 2024 (link).

The runner-up prizes 2024 are awarded to Fabienne Kiener for her paper The role of occupational skill sets in the digital transformation: how IT progress shapes returns to specialization and social skills (co-authored with Christian Eggenberger and Uschi Backes-Gellner), published in Journal of Business Economics in 2024 (link)...

... and to Maria Zumbuehl for her paper Private tutoring and academic achievement in a selective education system (co-authored with Stefanie Hof and Stefan C. Wolter), published in Education Economics in 2024 (link).

Best Paper Award Ceremony 2024:

We congratulate the winner of the Leading House Best Paper Award 2023, Patrick Lehnert, for his paper Proxying economic activity with daytime satellite imagery: Filling data gaps across time and space (co-authored with with Michael Niederberger, Uschi Backes-Gellner and Eric Bettinger), published in PNAS Nexus in 2023 (link).

The runner-up prizes 2023 are awarded to Patricia Palffy for her paper Social norms and gendered occupational choices of men and women: Time to turn the tide? (co-authored with Patrick Lehnert and Uschi Backes-Gellner), published in Industrial Relations in 2023 (link)...

... and to Tobias Schultheiss for his paper Different degrees of skill obsolescence across hard and soft skills and the role of lifelong learning for labor market outcomes (co-authored with Uschi Backes-Gellner), published in Industrial Relations in 2023 (link).

Best Paper Award Ceremony 2023: