Se vinderne af Den Usynlige Hånd og Zeuthen Prisen 2017

Den Usynlige Hånd
Den Usynlige Hånd bliver tildelt en forelæser ved Økonomisk Institut, som har demonstreret fremragende færdigheder inden for undervisningen.

SøS indstiftede prisen i 2000 for at skabe fokus på undervisning af høj kvalitet. Formålet var at give talentfulde undervisere et håndgribeligt bevis for deres evner og at gøre deres høje færdigheder synlige for en bredere kreds.

Prisen uddeles i samarbejde med Økonomisk Institut baseret på indstillinger fra de studerende og studienævnet. For første gang i år kunne alle studerende stemme på de indstillet gennem en afstemning på Altandetlige.dk.

På baggrund af en vægtet bedømmelse blev Søren Hove Ravn vinder af Den Usynlige Hånd 2017. Søren underviser i fagene ”Macroeconomics II” og ”Advanced Macroeconomics: Business Cycles”.Søren blev indstillet på baggrund af sine flotte evalueringer fra særligt ”Macroeconomics II”. Nogle er kommentarerne lyder: ”Meget dygtig og meget lærerigt at komme til forelæsningerne. Søren er utrolig skarp til at forklare pointerne”, ”Virkelig gode forelæsninger. Det er meget motiverende at der bliver inddraget praktiske eksempler og aktuel forskning på forskellige emner fra starten, og at der ikke bliver spildt hele forelæsninger på algebra” og ”Fantastiske slides”.Socialøkonomisk Samfund ønsker Søren stort tillykke med prisen og for sin fremragende undervisning, som med rette kan betragtes som et eksempel til efterfølgelse på Økonomisk Institut.

Zeuthen prisen
Zeuthen Prisen er speciale prisen på Økonomisk Instituttet uddelt af Socialøkonomisk Samfund og Zeuthen Fonden til minde om Dr. Polit. Frederik Ludvig Bang Zeuthen. Formålet med prisen er at opmuntre studerende ved Økonomisk Institut på Københavns Universitet til at udarbejde en artikel til publicering på baggrund af deres speciale.

I år var 13 personer indstillet, hvilket var det højeste antal i flere år. Årets nominerede var:

• Adam Harlang Meyer for “The Private Equity Governance Model – In developing and developed markets”
• Andreas Bovin og Malthe Nørgaard Nielsen for “Towards an understanding of housing bubbles: Incorporating biased expectations in macroeconomic models”
• Christian Juncher Lunde for “The fiscal impact of immigration in Denmark - A cross sectional analysis from 1994 to 2014”
• Daniel Sloth Olesen for “The Effect on Random Exam Assignment on Post-Secondary Education: An Empirical Analysis of Assignment to Exam in STEM courses for Danish High School Students”
  
• Frederik J. G. Nielsen for “The effect of uncertainty shocks in Denmark”
  
• Jakob Feveile Adolfsen for “Fiscal Tools at the Zero Lower Bound. A DSGE Model with Occasionally Binding Constraints on Monetary Policy and Borrowing”
  
• Mikkel Baggesgaard Mertzs for “Persona Non Grata: Estimating the Stigma Effect of Incarceration on earnings”
  
• Natasja Cordes for “Decision under risk – From game show to investor behavior”
  
• Peter Brandt Lund for “Supply Uncertainty in Treasury Bill Auctions: a tool for lowering the cost of government debt?”
  
• Sandra Simonsen for “Bombshell Results? The Electoral Consequences of Terrorism in India”
  
• Steven Fansher Holten Hansen for “The Role of Automatic Stabilizers in the Danish Business Cycle: A Dynamic Heterogeneous-Agent DSGE-model for a Small Open Economy”
  
• Tia Linea Hasager and Søs Nielsen for ”Kan en højere dagpengesats forbedre jobmatchkvaliteten? En empirisk analyse med et Regression Kink Design”
  
• Valdemar Stentoft-Hansen for ”Predictive Policing i Københavns Politi”
  

Vinderen af årets Zeuthen pris blev Mikkel Baggesgaard Mertz for hans speciale ”Persona non Grata: Estimating the Stigma effect of Incarceration on Earnings”.

Beslutning om at tildele netop Mikkels speciale prisen ud af et stærkt felt på 13 fremragende specialer blev truffet af bedømmelsesudvalget bestående af Adjunkt Asger Lau Andersen, Lektor Daniel le Maire, Professor Henrik Jensen og Adjunkt Nick Vikander, samt to repræsentanter fra Socialøkonomisk Samfund.

Bedømmelsesudvalget sagde følgende om specialet:

“The winner of this year’s Zeuthen prize addresses an important question: How does incarceration – the state of being imprisoned and thus obtaining a criminal record – affect future labor market outcomes? Answering this question is essential for informing public policy, but it is also difficult: As Mikkel explains, the ideal experiment would be to incarcerate randomly selected individuals from the population and compare their subsequent labor market performance to the rest of the population. Clearly, this is not a feasible path. But this thought experiment illustrates the key challenge facing a researcher who wishes to study the effects of incarceration: Incarcerated individuals are likely to be fundamentally different from the rest of the population, and their labor market performance would probably also have been very different, even if they had not been incarcerated. So without an obvious comparison group, how does one get a reliable estimate of the causal effect of incarceration on future labor market earnings

Mikkel’s solution to this problem is elegant and carefully executed. He exploits a seemingly small change in Danish law concerning the penalty for driving a vehicle in the disqualification period after being deprived of one’s license. Individuals convicted before this change were typically incarcerated for about 10 days and got a criminal record, while those convicted after the change received a fine. Mikkel argues convincingly that comparing the subsequent labor market outcomes for these two groups of offenders provides a good estimate of the causal effect of incarceration. Using a differences-in-differences research design, he then shows that offenders convicted after the change in penalty had substantially higher labor earnings for an extended period of time after their conviction. Given that offenders convicted before the change were only imprisoned for a short time, he interprets this difference as the result of the stigma effect of incarceration.

The quality of Mikkel’s paper is of a high academic standard. The data work is thorough, and the analysis is meticulous and convincing. But most importantly, Mikkel’s paper is a fine example of how to exploit naturally occurring experiments to provide credible answers to important but difficult questions. The committee congratulates him for this impressive work and is happy to award him with the 2017 Zeuthen prize.”

Fra Socialøkonomisk Samfund og Zeuthen Fonden ønskes Mikkel endnu en gang stort tillykke med Zeuthen Prisen 2017, som med prisen bliver indskrevet i en fornem klub af tidligere vindere såsom Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Jesper Rangvid, Bodil Nyboe Andersen og mange flere. Hele listen over vindere kan findes på http://www.econ.ku.dk/soes/zeuthenprisen/