Rice economist awarded Frisch Medal

Flavio Cunha, an associate professor of economics at Rice, is the recipient of the 2014 Frisch Medal, one of the top prizes for research in the field of economics.

FLAVIO CUNHA

The Frisch Medal was established by the Econometric Society to encourage the creation of exceptional applied work and its submission to the group’s journal, Econometrica. The award is given every two years for an applied article (empirical or theoretical) published in the journal during the past five years. The award is named in honor of Ragnar Frisch, the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics and editor of Econometrica from 1933 to 1954.

Cunha and co-authors Nobel laureate and University of Chicago economist James Heckman and Brown University economist Susanne Schennach received the award for the article “Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation.” The article appeared in the May 2010 edition of Econometrica and provided a comprehensive framework for analyzing the evolution of cognitive skills and personality traits across the different stages of childhood.

“The Frisch Medal award is a great honor and an even greater incentive to keep working on issues related to human capital formation, inequality and long-run economic growth,” Cunha said.

Econometrica publishes original articles in all branches of economics — theoretical and empirical, abstract and applied — and provides wide-ranging coverage across the subject area. For more information on the journal or the Econometric Society, visit www.econometricsociety.org.