Yu Chen Memorial Publication Prize

The Yu Chen Memorial Publication Prize (€ 2000) will be given once every year to the young University of Graz researcher with the best paper in economics in that year.

Who qualifies? The prize can only be given to a person who does not have tenure (either in Graz or elsewhere) and who wrote at least a first version of this paper, ideally in form of a Graz Economics Paper, at the University of Graz either as a PhD student or a Post-Doc. Normally the prize committee will only consider persons who are either currently working at the University of Graz or have left Graz at most four or five years ago.

What papers are considered?  Papers should be published in a peer-reviewed journal and should be about some aspect of economics. The prize committee considers publications in one of the 73 journals in the second of the two rankings on http://economicsjournals.blogspot.com/ as a first strong guideline as to the prize-worthiness of the paper. The prize committee will consider papers published in a journal not in this list (say in a general (natural) science journal) provided they clearly are about some aspect of economics. The prize committee will evaluate these papers relative to others.

Timing and Submissions: Anyone can suggest any person and paper for this prize by sending an email to a member of the prize committee. For the prize at year x the prize committee invites submissions and collects all relevant papers by the end of January of year x+1. The prize committee generally considers all publications within the last two years of the prize-giving date. This means the paper needs to be at least accepted in one of the two years x or x-1 (not x+1). This means a paper can be in the running for this prize for (at least) two years.

A note on co-authorships: While there is no explicit rule that the prize committee follows, a single authored paper is considered more favorably than a coauthored paper with another young researcher and that again more favorably than a coauthored paper with a senior researcher. Also without any clear rule in place generally papers with fewer coauthors will be considered more favorably.

A note on splitting the prize: Prizes are given for a person/paper combination. It is not expected that the prize is split between two or more papers. The prize can only be split if the winning paper has two or more persons who qualify for this prize.

Prize Committee: The prize committee is the research team of the economics department. The prize committee ultimately makes the decision based on the criteria laid out here.

Prize Ceremony: The prize will be given at a departmental meeting and the prizewinners will also be announced on the department website.