Dissertation Awards
Dissertation Awards
Allan Nevins and Alexander Gerschenkron Prizes
The Nevins and Gerschenkron prizes are awarded annually for the best dissertations on North-American and non-North-American topics completed during the previous year. Six finalists, three for each award, are chosen to present dissertation summaries at the Association’s annual meetings each fall. Finalists will receive funds to defray travel expenses and award recipients receive a cash prize.
Scholars submitting a dissertation may not in the same year submit a proposal to the general program that is part of or derived from the dissertation. On an exception basis, the Association will allow a two-year window following thesis completion for submission.
Allan Nevins Prize in American Economic History
The Allan Nevins Prize in American Economic History is awarded annually by the Economic History Association on behalf of Columbia University Press for the best dissertation in the United States or Canadian economic history completed during the previous year. The 2026 prize will be awarded at the Economic History Association’s annual meeting.
Scholars submitting a dissertation for the dissertation and prizes for the 2026 Economic History Association meeting may not submit a proposal for the general program that is part of or derived from the dissertation.
Eligibility
Those who have successfully defended their dissertations between June 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026 are eligible and invited to submit their dissertation for consideration.
All candidates for these prizes must be members of the Economic History Association.
Dissertations submitted for consideration must be in English.
Submission of a dissertation implies that candidates are prepared to attend the 2026 meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.
Presentation of a dissertation summary is required by all finalists.
Submissions
To be considered for this prize, completed dissertations must be submitted through our online submission system on or before May 31, 2026. Submissions of more than 10MB should prepare to send a download link rather than an attachment.
To submit an a dissertation please click HERE.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: MAY 31, 2026
For questions regarding the application process, please contact
Joshua Hausman at jhausma1@gmail.com
Notices announcing the selection of finalists will be sent to all candidates by July 15, 2026.
Congratulations to the 2025 Allan Nevins Prize Winner
Allison Green
Current Affiliation: London School of Economics, PhD Affiliation: Princeton University
The Good Place: How Networks, Preferences, and Public Policy Determine the Value of Where We Live
Allan Nevins Prize Recipients
| YEAR | RECIPIENT | TITLE | COMPLETING INSTITUTION | ADVISORS/NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Laura Weiwu | Essays on Inequality in Cities: Evidence from the Interstate Highway System | MIT | |
| 2023 | Hannah Postel | Records of Exclusion: Chinese Immigration in Historical Perspective | Princeton University | Leah Boustan (chair), Beth Lew-Williams, Douglas Massey, Tod Hamilton, and Brandon Stewart |
| 2022 | Jingyi Huang | The Impact of Innovation, Regulation, and Market Power on Economic Development: Evidence from the American West | University of California, Los Angeles | |
| 2021 | Brian Marein | The Economic Development of Puerto Rico after United States Annexation | University of Colorado | |
| 2020 | Sarah Quincy | Back to Good Times: The Real Effects of Credit in Great-Depression California | University of California, Davis | |
| 2019 | Ellora Derenoncourt | Long-run Determinants of US Racial Inequality: Evidence from the Great Migration and the FLSA | Harvard University | Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin |
| 2018 | Gillian Brunet | Understanding the Effects of Fiscal Policy: Measurement, Mechanisms, and Lessons from History | UC-Berkeley | Christina Romer, Barry Eichengreen, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Noam Yuchtman |
| 2017 | Vellore Arthi | Human Capital Formation and the American Dust Bowl | Oxford | James Fenske, Jane Humphries |
| 2016 | James Feigenbaum | Essays on Intergenerational Mobility and Inequality in Economic History | Harvard | |
| 2015 | Andrew Goodman-Bacon | Three Essays in health Policy Evaluation | Michigan | Martha Bailey |
| 2014 | Joshua Lewis | The Impact of Technological Change within the Home | University of Toronto | Dwayne Benjamin, Robert McMillan, Aloysius Siow, and Mark Stabile |
| 2013 | Joshua Hausman | New Deal Policies and Recovery from the Great Depression | UC-Berkeley | Barry Eichengreen |
| 2012 | Daniel Immerwahr | Quests for Community: The United States, Community Development, and the World, 1935-1965 | UC-Berkeley | David Hollinger, Robin Einhorn, and Peter Evans |
| 2011 | Katherine Shester | American Public Housing’s Origins and Effects | Vanderbilit University | William Collins |
| 2010 | Daniel Fetter | “Federal Policy Transformation and Mid-century in U.S. Housing Markets | Harvard | Edward Glaeser and Claudia Goldin |
| 2009 | Melinda Miller | Essays on Race and the Persistence of Economic Inequality | Michigan | Warren Whatley and Benjamin Chabot |
| 2008 | Marco Sunder | Passports and economic development: an anthropmetric history of the US Elite in the 19th Century | Munich | John Komlos and Claude Hillinger |
| 2007 | Mark Geiger | Missouri's Hidden Civil War: Financial Conspiracy and the End of the Planter Elite | Missouri | |
| 2006 | Leah Platt Boustan | The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets, 1940-1970 | Harvard | Claudia Goldin |
| 2005 | William H. Bergmann | Commerce and Arms: The Federal Government, Native Americans, and the Economy of the Old Northwest, 1783-1807 | Cincinatti | |
| 2004 | Rebecca Ann Holmes | The Impact of State Labor Regulations on Manuacturing Input Demand during the Progressive Era | Arizona | Price Fishback |
| 2003 | Claire Priest | Currency Policies and the Nature of Litigation in Colonial New England | Yale University | Robert Gordon |
| 2002 | Joseph Davis | A Quantity Based Annual Index of U.S. Industrial Production, 1790-1915: An Empirical Appraisal of Historical Business Cycle Fluctuations | Duke | Michelle Connolly |
| 2001 | Daniel A. Schiffman | Shattered Rails, Ruined Credit: Financial Fragility and Railroad Operations in the Great Depression | Columbia | Charles Calomiras |
| 2000 | William White | An Unsung Hero: The Farm Tractor's Contribution to Twentieth Century United States Economic Growth | Ohio State | Rick Steckel |
| 1999 | Ian E. M. Keay | Assessing the Performance of Canada's Manufacturers: Firm Level Evidence From 1902-1990 | University of British Columbia | Robert Allen |
| 1998 | William Collins | Labor Mobility in American and Indian Economic History | Harvard | Jeffrey Williamson |
| 1997 | Mark Siegler | Real Output and Business Cycle Volatility, 1869-1993 | University of California at Davis | |
| 1996 | Steven Herscovici | Progress amid Poverty: Economic Opportunity in Antebellum Newburyport | University of Chicago | |
| 1995 | John Majewski | Commerce and Community: Internal Improvements in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1780-1860 | University of California at Los Angeles | |
| 1994 | Dora Costa | Health, Income and Retirement: Evidence from Nineteenth Century America | University of Chicago | |
| 1993 | Mary Eschelbach Gregson | Strategies for Commercialization: Missouri Agriculture, 1860-1880 | University of Illinois | |
| 1992 | Joseph Ferrie | We Are Yankees Now’: The Economic Mobility of Two Thousand Antebellum Immigrants to the USA | University of Chicago | |
| 1991 | Shawn Kantor | Property Rights and the Dynamics of Institutional Change: The Closing of the Georgia Open Range, 1870-1900 | California Institute of Technology | |
| 1990 | Robert Whaples | The Shortening of the American Work Week | Pennsylvania | |
| 1989 | Lee Craig | Farm Output, Productivity and Fertility Decline in the Antebellum Northern United States | Indiana University | |
| 1989 | Adrienne Hood | Organization and the Extent of Textile Manufacture in Eighteenth Century Rural Pennsylvania: A Case Study of Chester County | University of California at San Diego | |
| 1988 | David Wheelock | The Strategy and Consistency of Federal Reserve Monetary Policy, 1919-1933 | University of Illinois | |
| 1987 | Kenneth Lipartito | The Telephone in the South: A Comparative Analysis, 1877-1920 | Johns Hopkins University | |
| 1986 | Carolyn Cooper | The Roles of Thomas Blanchard’s Woodworking Inventions in Nineteenth Century Technology | Yale University | |
| 1985 | Donald Hoke | Ingenuous Yankees: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures in the Private Sector | University of Wisconsin | |
| 1984 | Mary Schweitzer | Contracts and Custom: Economic Policy in Colonial Pennsylvania, 1717-1755 | Johns Hopkins | |
| 1983 | Warren Whatley | Institutional Change and Mechanization in the Cotton south: The Tractorization of Cotton Farming | Stanford University | |
| 1982 | Sanford Jacoby | The Origins of Internal Labor Markets in American Manufacturing Firms, 1910-1940 | University of California at Berkeley | |
| 1981 | Cathy McHugh | The Family Labor System in the Southern Cotton Textile Industry, 1880-1912 | Stanford University | |
| 1980 | Stuart Leslie | Charles Kettering, 1876-1958 | University of Delaware | |
| 1979 | David St. Clair | Entrepreneurship and the American Automobile Industry | University of Utah | |
| 1978 | Elyce Rotella | Women’s Labor Force Participation and Growth of Clerical Employment in the United States, 1870-1930 | University of Pennsylvania | |
| 1978 | Joan Hannon | The Immigrant Worker in the Promised Land: Human Capital and Ethnic Discrimination in the Michigan Labor Market, 1888-1891 | University of Wisconsin | |
| 1977 | Pamela Nickless | Changing Labor Productivity and Utilization of Native Women Workers in the American Cotton Textile Industry: 1825-1860 | Purdue University | |
| 1976 | Townsend Walker | Gold Mountain States: Chinese Migration to the United States, 1848-1882 | Stanford University | |
| 1975 | Alex Field | Educational Reform and Manufacturing Development in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts | University of California at Berkeley | |
| 1974 | Diane Lindstrom | Demand, Markets and Eastern Economic Development: Philadelphia, 1815-1840 | University of Delaware | |
| 1973 | Jonathan Pincus | A Positive Theory of Tariff Formation as Applied to Nineteenth Century United States | Stanford University | |
| 1972 | Information Not Available | |||
| 1971 | William Whitney | The Structure of the American Economy in the Late Nineteenth Century | Pennsylvania | |
| Earlier information is not available. If anyone has information about this award in 1972 or in earlier years, we would love to hear from you! |