Best Paper Prizes

The Econometric Society adopted a "Best Paper Prize" this year for its two journals Quantitative Economics and Theoretical Economics.  These awards highlight the best paper published in each of the journals in the areas of theoretical and empirical quantitative economics and economic theory. Winners are selected by the journals' editors and co-editors.

We are pleased to announce the following papers have been awarded the 2015 "Best Paper Prize":

Quantitative Economics
Eric Weese, "Political Mergers as Coalition Formation: An Analysis of the Heisei Municipal Amalgamations", Volume 6, Issue 2, 2015
In Japan, a formula‐based transfer system resulted in local benefits from municipal mergers differing substantially from national benefits. A change in this transfer policy and the mergers that resulted are analyzed using a structural model involving private consumption, public good quality, and geographic distance, along with an asymmetric information problem between the national and local levels of government. The merger process is modeled using a cooperative form coalition formation game. Parameter estimates are obtained using a moment inequalities approach that requires neither an equilibrium selection assumption nor the enumeration of all possible mergers. Estimates suggest that the actual merger incentives the national government offered were weak relative to the optimal incentives, and the post‐merger number of municipalities were large relative to the optimal number.

Theoretical Economics
Dilip Abreu, David G. Pearce, and Ennio Stacchetti, "One-sided Uncertainty and Delay in Reputational Bargaining", Volume 10, Issue 3, 2015
A two-person infinite-horizon bargaining model where one of the players may have either of two discount factors, has a multiplicity of perfect Bayesian equilibria. Introducing the slightest possibility that either player may be one of a rich variety of stationary behavioral types singles out a particular solution and appears to support some axiomatic treatments in the early literature in their conclusion that there is a negligible delay to agreement. Perturbing the model with a slightly broader class of behavioral types that allows the informed player to delay making his initial demand again achieves powerful equilibrium refinement. But there is substantial delay to agreement, and predictions depend continuously on the ex ante probabilities of the patient and impatient types of the informed player, counter to what the literature suggests.