Female Economist Wins Prize for First Time

From today's WSJ: The American Economic Association announced Friday that Susan Athey, a 36-year-old professor at Harvard University with professional interests ranging from deepest economic theory to Canadian timber auctions, had won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal, awarded every two years to the nation's most promising economist under the age of 40. No woman had won the medal in its 60-year history.

Around 40% of past Medal winners have gone on to win the Nobel prize in economics, following an average wait of 22 years. Former winners include Nobel laureates such as Paul Samuelson (1947), Milton Friedman (1951), Gary Becker (1967), and other economists such as Paul Krugman (1991), Lawrence Summers (1993) and Steven Levitt (2003).