Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether receiving prestigious academic awards—the John Bates Clark Medal and the Fellowship of the Econometric Society—is associated with higher subsequent...

This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates. Randomization assures that receipt of the award is orthogonal to previous...

This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates. Randomization assures that receipt of the award is orthogonal to previous...

Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether a specific, yet important, award in economics, the John Bates Clark Medal, raises recipients’ subsequent research activity and status compared to a...

Happiness research has been a great success by yielding new and important insights. These results are often used in a technocratic manner: Governments should maximize, or at least raise, the subjective well-being of the population measured by the national happiness index. Yet the government has...

External prominence (measured by the number of pages indexed on search engines or TED talk invitations) can be capitalized on the speakers' market while research performance (measured by publication and citation indicators) cannot. There is thus a clear distinction between the capitalization of...

Awards appear in various forms, ranging from the title "Employee of the Month" to prizes, decorations, and other honors. This contribution develops a theory designed to analyze the widely-observed phenomenon of award giving. We use signaling theory as a basis for our discussion. The perspectives...

The external influence of scholarly activity has to date been measured primarily in terms of publications and citations, metrics that also dominate the promotion and grant processes. Yet the array of scholarly activities visible to the outside world are far more extensive and recently developed...

Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether a specific, yet important, award in economics, the John Bates Clark Medal, raises recipients’ subsequent research activity and status compared to a...

Happiness research is one of the most vivid and fruitful parts of modern economics. The focus is on empirical findings. In contrast, theoretical work has been rather neglected. The paper deals with three areas needing more analytical work: the choice or imposition of comparison or reference...