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
Congratulations to the 2023 Allan Nevins Prize Winner
Hannah Postel, Current Affiliation: Stanford University, PhD Affiliation: Princeton University – Records of Exclusion: Chinese Immigration in Historical Perspective – Committee: Leah Boustan (chair), Beth Lew-Williams, Douglas Massey, Tod Hamilton, and Brandon Stewart.
Allan Nevins Prize Recipients
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 next prize will be awarded at the Economic History Association’s annual meeting.
Scholars submitting a dissertation for the dissertation and prizes for the 2024 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 received their Ph.D. between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024 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 2024 meeting.
Presentation of a dissertation summary is required by all finalists.
Submissions
To be considered for this prize, completed dissertations must be submitted by email on or before May 31, 2024.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: MAY 31, 2024
Dissertations must include a page with the names of the dissertation committee members. The version of the dissertation submitted for consideration for the prize must be the same one that was submitted for the degree. It may not be a later version. Submissions of more than 5MB should prepare to send a download link rather than an attachment.
Please send submissions to: Vellore Arthi at varthi@uci.edu.
All submissions will be acknowledged by return email.
Notices announcing the selection of finalists will be sent to all candidates by July 15, 2024.
| YEAR | RECIPIENT | INSTITUTION | TITLE | COMPLETING INSTITUTION | ADVISORS/NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Hannah Postel | Stanford University | 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 | Harvard University and Brandeis University | The Impact of Innovation, Regulation, and Market Power on Economic Development: Evidence from the American West | University of California, Los Angeles | This prize is awarded on behalf of Columbia University Press. |
| 2021 | Brian Marien | University of Tororonto | The Economic Development of Puerto Rico after United States Annexation | University of Colorado | |
| 2020 | Sarah Quincy | Vanderbilit University | Back to Good Times: The Real Effects of Credit in Great-Depression California | University of California, Davis | |
| 2019 | Ellora Derenoncourt | Princeton University | Long-run Determinants of US Racial Inequality: Evidence from the Great Migration and the FLSA | Harvard University | Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin |
| 2018 | Eric Prawitz | On the Move: Essays on the Economic and Political Development of Sweden | Stockholm University | ||
| 2017 | Michela Giorcelli | Economic Recovery and the Determinants of Production and Innovation: Evidence from Post-WWII Italy | Stanford University | ||
| 2016 | Reka Juhasz | Temporary Protection, Technology Adoption and Economic Development | London School of Economics | ||
| 2015 | Jose-Antonio Espin-Sanchez | The Illiquidity of Water Markets | Northwestern University | ||
| 2014 | Tyler Beck Goodspeed | Essays in British Financial History | Harvard University | ||
| 2013 | Eric Monnet | French Monetary Policy and Credit Control, 1945-1975 | Paris School of Economics and EHESS | ||
| 2012 | Christian Dippel | Essays in International Political Economy | University of Toronto | ||
| 2011 | Olivier Accominotti | Foreign Exchange Reserves, Financial Instability and Contagion: Three Essays on the Great Depression | Institut Politiques de Paris | ||
| 2010 | James Fenske | Property Rights in Rural West Africa: Causes and Consequences | Yale University | ||
| 2009 | Roman Studer | Market Integration and Economic Development: A Comparative Study of India and Europe, 1700-1800 | Oxford University | ||
| 2008 | Amilcar Eduardo Challu | Grain Markets, Food Supply Policies, and Living Standards in late Colonial Mexico | Harvard University | ||
| 2007 | Steven Nafziger | Communal Institutions, Resource Allocation, and Russian Economic Development: 1861-1905 | Yale University | ||
| 2006 | Ran Abramitsky | The Limits of Equality: An Economics Analysis of the Israeli Kibbutz | Northwestern University | ||
| 2005 | Drew Keeling | The Business of Transatlantic Migration between Europe and the USA, 1900-1914 | University of California, Berkeley | ||
| 2004 | Tracy K. Dennison | Economy and Society in Rural Russia: The Serf Estate of Voshchazhnikovo | University of Cambridge | ||
| 2003 | Petra Moser | Determinants of Innovation: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century World Fairs | University of California, Berkeley | ||
| 2002 | Graciela Márquez | The Political Economy of Mexican Protectionism, 1868-1911 | Harvard University | ||
| 2001 | Eona Karakacili | Peasants, Productivity and Profit in the Open Fields of England: A Study of Economic and Social Development | University of Torontounder | ||
| 2000 | Aurora Gomez-Galvarriato Freer | The Impact of Revolution: Business and Labor in the Mexican Textile Industry, Orizaba, Veracruz, 1900-1930 | Harvard University | ||
| 1999 | Chiaki Moriguchi | The Evolution of Employment Systems in the United States and Japan, 1900-1960: A Comparative Historical and Institutional Analysis | Stanford University | ||
| 1998 | Hal Hansen | University of Wisconsin, for the dissertation, Caps and Gowns: Historical Reflections on the Institutions that Shaped Learning for Work in Germany and the United States, 1800-1945 | |||
| 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! |