 | | K. F. Zimmermann, E. Moretti |
On January 6, 2007, IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann presented the first IZA Young Labor Economist Award to Enrico Moretti (University of California, Berkeley) during an IZA reception held at the Annual Meetings of the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) in Chicago. This newly established prize is awarded for an outstanding paper published by young labor economists under the age of 40. The selection committee – consisting of Zimmermann, IZA Research Director Armin Falk and six IZA Program Directors – chose Moretti's paper "Estimating the Social Return to Higher Education: Evidence from Longitudinal and Repeated Cross-Sectional Data" (Journal of Econometrics, 2004) from a large number of nominations submitted by IZA Research Fellows.
During the award ceremony, Zimmermann stated the selection committee was impressed by the "scientific originality, methodological rigor and policy relevance" of the paper, which provided evidence that the social return to education may in fact exceed the private return. In his acceptance speech, Moretti declared he felt extremely honored to receive this inaugural award from an "institute that has in just a few years established itself at the forefront of international research in labor economics." |
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