The History of Economics Society is delighted to announce the winner of
this year's *Best Conference Paper by a Young Scholar Prize*.

The prize committee, consisting of Renee Prendergast (chair), D. Wade
Hands, and Shinji Nohara, decided to award the 2023 prize to *Ibanca Anand *for
her paper 'Resisting Narrative Closure: The Comparative and Historical
Imagination of Evsey Domar', presented during the recent HES Meetings in
Vancouver, BC.


*Most of us remember Evsey Domar as an early contributor to growth theory.
Ibanca Anand’s paper is instead about his contributions to comparative
economics and economic history, specifically his work on the economy of the
USSR during the cold war era and on Russian economic history. By closely
examining Domar’s intellectual arguments on technical matters such as index
numbers, Anand shows that Domar recognised the complexity and indeterminacy
of economic problems and preserved a space within which to recognise a
diversity of approaches to economic life and its measurement. As Anand also
shows, Domar’s work on the history of serfdom in Russia brings out the
importance of context and the limitations of purely economic explanations
of events. Anand takes a unique approach to historical narratives by
emphasizing Domar's "penchant for ambiguity" and resistance to closure,
particularlyscientific closure.*

*The paper provides an excellent example of the way in which history of
economic thought can embrace complexity and be relevant to a wide range of
scholarly interests. It is written in an engaging style. Its arguments are
extremely clear and supported by excellent scholarship.*

Previous award winners can be found on the HES website at:
https://historyofeconomics.org/best-conference-paper-by-a-young-scholar/
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Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak
Secretary, History of Economics Society
Associate Professor, The American University of Paris