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, particularly
scientific 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/---
Carlos Eduardo SuprinyakSecretary, History of Economics SocietyAssociate Professor, The American University of Paris