In 1993 the Finnish Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation established a biennial award, called the Yrjö Jahnsson prize, for a European economist under 45 years old who has made a contribution in theoretical and applied research that is significant to economics in Europe . The EEA participates in the selection of the award winner. The outcome is announced at the odd year annual congress. This happened for the first time at the 1993 Helsinki Congress.

The 2009 Yrjö Jahnsson Award

The selection committee, chaired by Guido Tabellini, consisted of five members, four nominated by the European Economic Association and one by the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation. Early in the year the selection committee consulted all EEA Fellows individually and used their responses together with their own judgement to form a short list.

The 2009 prize was awarded to -

John VAN REENEN, London School of Economics, and

Fabrizio ZILIBOTTI, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich

The report of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award Committee's reads as follows-
John van Reenen and Fabrizio Zilibotti, both on their own and in joint work, have made several important contributions to the analysis of technological innovation and its link with economic growth and labor market phenomena.
'John Van Reenen has made several contributions to the empirical analysis of labour markets, competition policy and industrial economics, especially in areas relating to productivity growth, management practices, R&D, intellectual property, and investment decisions. He has also done pioneering work on the organizational structure of the firm and its relation to innovation, contributing both with empirical evidence and measurement tools.
Fabrizio Zilibotti has made important contributions to macroeconomics, political economics and labor economics. In particular, he has greatly improved our understanding of how technological innovation affects economic growth at different stages of economic development. He also contributed to the positive analysis of the welfare state, explaining how economic and political forces interact to shape government redistribution.
The work of Van Reenen and Zilibotti addresses very relevant questions, with rich policy implications, using a diversity of research styles and methods, but always with the highest standards of rigor and excellence. '

Please click here for a list of past recipients 

For the full reports, please write to eea@unicatt.it