Hicks-Tinbergen Award 2012 to Tabellini

Assigned every second year for an outstanding article published in the Journal of European Economic Association

Guido Tabellini (Department of Economics and rector of Università Bocconi) has won the Hicks-Tinbergen Award 2012 of the European Economic Association (EEA).

The award, created in 1991, is assigned every even year to the author (or authors) of an outstanding article published in the Journal of European Economic Association during the two preceding years. It is named after Hicks and Tinbergen to make it clear that the EEA stands for both theoretical and empirical work in economics in Europe.

The winning article is Tabellini’s Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe, (Journal of the European Economic Association, Volume 8, Issue 4, pages 677–716, June 2010, doi: 10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.tb00537.x).

The data on European regions suggest that culture has a causal effect on economic development, Tabellini finds in the paper, and that the component of culture explained by the historical variables is an important determinant of regional economic performance. Social capital and confidence in the individual are the cultural traits that seem more favourably connected to development.