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The Czech Economic Society awarded the Young Economist of the Year 2024 Awards

2 December, 2024

The Czech Economic Society's Young Economist 2024 laureate is Vladimir Shchukin, a CERGE-EI PhD student, who received the award for his paper titled "Political Economy of Industrialization." Remarkably, second and third places were also awarded to CERGE-EI PhD students. Congratulations to all!

In the winning paper that falls within the microeconomics and analysis of collective decision-making, Vladimir proposes a theory explaining why the landowning elite industrialized the economy in the second half of the 19th century. He argues that the landowning elite industrialized the economy to prevent the formation of a coalition between workers and capitalists against the existing political regime. The promotion of industrialization eliminated capital gains from political change and simultaneously increased expected losses from redistribution for capitalists if the political regime were to change. Capitalists preferred to preserve the existing political regime, and the landowning elite became more entrenched in political power.  In addition, his theoretical framework reveals how landowners could guarantee future pro-industrial economic institutions without sharing political power. This theory also can be applied to developing countries and transitional economies.

Second place was awarded to CERGE-EI PhD student Sona Badalyan for her paper "Firm Responses to Raising Women’s Retirement Age." In the awarded paper, Sona examines the effects of increasing the retirement age for women following the shift to gender-neutral retirement policies, using a unique reform in Germany where women’s retirement ages were raised by at least 3 years. Sona finds that as older women remain in the workforce longer, firms adjust by reducing promotions and limiting external hiring, particularly affecting middle-aged employees, the closest substitutes on the career ladder. These findings can help policymakers in countries like the Czech Republic, where similar reforms are underway, understand how such policies may influence workforce dynamics and career opportunities across age groups.

Third place went to CERGE-EI PhD student Gayane Baghumyan for her paper "Sexual-Orientation Discrimination and Biological Attributions: Experimental Evidence from Russia." In her paper, Gayane investigates sexual orientation discrimination in Russia and the effects of providing information on the biological origins of homosexuality. Using an online experiment involving money allocation tasks, the results show that providing evidence supporting the biological causes of homosexuality intensified discrimination. This allows her to identify the causal impact of information on discriminatory behavior. The paper documents the prevalence of discrimination against individuals with same-sex partners in Russia. On average, roughly 54% of participants exhibit discriminatory behavior against profiles with same-sex partners by allocating 16 percentage points less money to them. Further, the results suggest that exposure to evidence on the biological causes of homosexuality negatively affects discriminatory behavior. The findings suggest that such information might prime negative attitudes or increase social distance in low-tolerance environments, highlighting the complexities of combating discrimination through information provision.

An Honourable Recognition by the President of the Czech Economic Society for an Excellent Paper for authors aged 25 years or younger has been awarded to Sofiana Sinani, a CERGE-EI PhD student for a paper titled "The Effect of Longer Maternal Care on Children’s Occupation Choices". The paper investigates the role of parents as role models shaping their children's gender norms, which in turn, impact their career aspirations. She uses a one-year extension of maternal care in the Czech Republic to investigate whether it affected their children's gender norms as captured by their field-of-study university applications. Sofiana finds that the affected boys are 20% less likely to apply to highly female programs while not observing any effect on girls. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that boys hold more traditional occupation preferences because they grew up in a more conservative environment. The paper offers the first evidence that longer maternal care does have the power to influence children’s gendered-specific occupation preferences.