Scholarly impact and the timing of major awards in economics

The present study extends prior analysis of the link between winning the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and winning the John Bates Clark Medal, arguably the two most prestigious awards in the discipline, by examining the length of time between bestowal of the two awards using a right-censored tobit model. In doing so, we find that an increase of one standard deviation in the impact of a Clark Medal winner’s research portfolio is enough to reduce the time span between bestowal of these two honors by almost 10 years, an important consideration given that the more prestigious award, the Nobel Prize, is not conferred posthumously. Furthermore, our results also suggest that institutional affiliation is also important in reducing time between bestowals. In this regard, affiliation with any one of three institutions, namely Princeton, Stanford and Chicago, appears to significantly reduce this time span by 10 or more years.