Orley Ashenfelter received an honorary degree from Charles University on January 15th, 2014 in Prague. Professor Ashenfelter (Princeton University), who is a former member of the CERGE-EI Executive and Supervisory Committee and a current member of the CERGE-EI Foundation Board of Directors, has been a long-time supporter of CERGE-EI. He is also one of the leading economists of our time.
JUSTIFICATION OF THE AWARD
Professor Ashenfelter is widely regarded as the originator of the use of so-called natural experiments to infer causality about economic relationships. Many important social science questions seemed impossible to answer due to absence of both necessary data and convincing econometric techniques. Professor Ashenfelter pioneered innovative formulations and empirical testing of economic hypotheses and creative data collection. The methods he introduced are used in all social sciences today. He has also helped to transform our views of the labor market as he has made major advances in the study of wage structure, trade unions, labor supply, discrimination, and education and retraining.
Professor Ashenfelter’s numerous honors and awards include the Karel Englis Honorary Medal of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, the Jacob Mincer Award of the Society of Labor Economists, the IZA Prize in Labor Economics, and the Ragnar Frisch Prize of the Econometric Society. In 2005, he was named a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 1977 he was named a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Brussels in 2002.
Selected publications:
- Bargaining Theory, Trade Unions, and Industrial Strike Activity. American Economic Review, 1969
- American Trade Union Growth: 1900-1960. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1969
- Unionism, Relative Wages, and Labor Quality in US Manufacturing. International Economic Review, 1972
- Estimation of Income and Substitution Effects in a Model of Family Labor Supply. Econometrica, 1974
- Estimating the Effect of Training Programs on Earnings. Review of Economics and Statistics, 1978
- Using the Longitudinal Structure of Earnings to Estimate the Effect of Training Programs. Review of Economics and Statistics,1985
- Estimates of the Economic Returns to Schooling from a New Sample of Twins. American Economic Review, 1994
- Using Mandated Speed Limits to Measure the Value of a Statistical Life. Journal of Political Economy, 2004
Cooperation with Charles University:
Since the early 1990s, Professor Ashenfelter has actively participated in the process of restoration of doctoral education and research in economics in the Czech Republic and more broadly in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 1999 he has served on the Board of Directors of the CERGE-EI Foundation, which aims to foster economics education in the region and which supports the doctoral program in economics at CERGE-EI, the joint workplace of the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE) of Charles University, Prague, and of the Economics Institute (EI) of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Between 2001 and 2007 he has also been a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee of CERGE-EI, an academic supervisory body charged with supporting the quality of research and education at the joint workplace. During his regular visits to Prague, he has provided long-term support and valuable advice to students and faculty alike, and he has also helped the development efforts at the CERGE-EI library, which serves not only the CERGE-EI community, but also an equally large group of researchers from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University. He has also played an active and successful role in the CERGE-EI Foundation’s efforts to raise funds from sponsors to support economics education including student mobility or stipends as well as economics research in the region.
Justification:
Professor Ashenfelter has had a major influence on economics research, particularly in the area of impact measurement of social programs, but also in the general study of labor markets. He has pioneered the method of “natural experiments” widely used today to uncover causal relationships in social sciences. It was his indisputable scientific contribution together with his long-standing support of research on transition economics and of economics education at Charles University, where he has helped to grow a new generation of economists, that has led the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Social Sciences to submit a proposal to award him an Honorary Doctorate of Charles University in Prague.
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