SBCA Awards
The Society Fellows Program
The Society Fellows Program recognizes people who have made substantial contributions to the theory or practice for benefit-cost analysis. This program enhances the ability of SBCA to recognize outstanding achievements in the field of benefit-cost analysis. Awardees must have demonstrated a significant contribution to the theory and/or practice of benefit-cost analysis. While not essential, participation in SBCA, SBCA-sponsored events, and publication in the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis will be considered to be important aspects of an individual’s contribution. A candidate must be living at the time of nomination. Membership in the Society is not required.
Any SBCA member may nominate a candidate for Fellow. SBCA looks to make the Fellows group as diverse as possible and welcomes nominations from around the world. Nominations should include a Curriculum Vitae of the nominee, a two-page nomination letter outlining what contributions the individual has made that warrant the award, and at least one additional letter of support from a second individual. In addition, members of the SBCA Board of Directors may nominate candidates that have not been otherwise nominated. The deadline for nominations is October 31 each year.
Award Recipients
Outstanding Dissertation Award
The Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis has established an annual award for the best Ph.D. thesis dealing with the theory and/or practice of benefit-cost analysis. The award is intended to recognize outstanding work by promising new researchers in the field. It is accompanied by a $1,000 cash prize and the winner will be recognized at the SBCA annual meeting. In addition, recipients will be encouraged to submit a paper based on their dissertation to the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis. The paper will undergo the standard journal peer-review process.
The range of topics for candidate dissertations is very broad, i.e., dissertations that would interest the Society's members, including, but not limited to:
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- Benefit-cost analysis
- Cost-effectiveness analysis
- Cost analysis
- Regulatory impact analysis
- Risk-benefit analysis
- Applied welfare economic analysis
- Damage assessments
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- Civil and criminal justice
- Climate change
- Education and training
- Energy, natural resources, and environment
- Finance and financial markets
- Food and agriculture
- Health, health insurance, and health care
- International trade and development
- Safety and security
- Social welfare programs
- Taxation and government revenue generation
- Transportation and infrastructure
- Workforce and workplace
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A dissertation will be eligible if it was successfully defended between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, and has not previously been considered for the award. Eligible dissertations must have been accepted by an accredited institution of higher education in any country in fulfillment of a doctoral degree. The degree field is not limited to economics. Dissertations must be written in English.
Submissions will be reviewed by a Selection Committee appointed by the SBCA Board of Directors. Submissions will be evaluated based on the quality of the methodological work (theoretical or empirical), the contributions to the field, the quality of the exposition, and the relevance for policy.
The following materials are needed to apply:
- The applicant's name; the date, degree, and institution of the defended dissertation; and a URL from which a pdf of the dissertation submission can be downloaded.
- A 1,000-word statement from the applicant identifying the relevant portion(s) of the dissertation that should be considered for the award and the applicability of the work given the criteria noted above.
- A signed nomination letter from the dissertation committee chair or another committee member explaining the dissertation's originality and contribution to the field (pdf file preferred).
- The applicant's CV (pdf file preferred).
Submissions are due on October 31, 2025, by 5:00 p.m. United States Eastern time. Applicants will receive an acknowledgment that their submission was received and will be notified of the outcome by early December.
Award Recipients
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2025
Mark Radin, "Understanding the Costs and Benefits of Community-Led Total Sanitation in Eliminating Open Defecation" (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2024)
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2024
Abigail J. H. Ostriker, "Essays on the Economics of Environmental and Health Risk" (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023)
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2023
Rachel Dalafave, "Lifesaving Policies, Outcome, Spillover Effects, and How to Address Them" (Vanderbilt University, 2022)
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2022
Majid (Seyedmajid) Hashemi, "The Economic Value of Electricity Reliability" (Clemson University, 2022)
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2021
Gabriel Englander, "Empirical Essays on Natural Resource Exploitation" (University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2020)
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2020
Clayton J. Masterman, "An Empirical Analysis of Policy Responses to the Opioid Epidemic" (Vanderbilt University, 2019)
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Jerry Ellig Award for Best Student Paper at the SBCA Annual Conference
Dr. Jerry Ellig was a research professor in the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. His untimely death in January 2021 was not only a great loss for his friends and colleagues but also to the general public who never knew him but were the beneficiaries of his insightful contributions to public policy and administration. He was a wonderful mentor to his many graduate students and junior colleagues. In addition, Jerry was a great communicator, able to take his academic work and translate it for different audiences, including through seminars, op-eds, short presentations, and classroom teaching.
To honor Jerry’s inspirational legacy, the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center established the Jerry Ellig Memorial Fund for Applied Policy Analysis. The fund has set up a recurring prize at the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis Annual Conference for the best graduate student paper presented at the SBCA Annual Conference that applies economic, law, political science, policy analysis, and/or public administration concepts to real policy problems. An Award Committee will review the student abstracts and presentations and make an award following each year’s annual conference. The winner will be announced in the SBCA newsletter and on the Society’s website. The winner will also receive a $1,000 cash prize.
For more information about this award or how to be considered, please contact the Society at [email protected].
Award Recipients
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2025
Lexin Cai, "Short- and Long-Run Effects of Universal School Meals: Evidence from the Community Eligibility Provision" (Cornell University)
Abstract: Free and reduced-price school meal programs (FRP) in the US are generally means-tested, targeting children from low-income families. Over a decade ago, the federal government introduced the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which incentivized schools to provide universal free meals, expanding access to all students, regardless of income. By 2023, over 20 million students nationwide, including 2.6 million in Texas, attended a school that had adopted CEP. Prior research on the effectiveness of CEP has almost exclusively focused on a limited set of short-run outcomes, such as test scores. However, test scores may not translate into long-run indicators of student success. I estimate the effects of CEP on a more comprehensive set of academic, behavioral, and economic outcomes using rich administrative data from the state of Texas. This data follows the universe of public prekindergarten (PK)-12 students through college and into the workforce. To estimate effects, I use two difference-in-differences (DD) research designs, one comparing individual student outcomes before and after CEP introduction and another comparing cohorts of students with varying lengths of exposure to CEP. In addition to student outcomes, I examine the effects of adopting CEP on student’s parents’ income and school district financial outcomes.
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2024
Youngho (Young) Kim, "Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs and Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture" (University of Maryland at College Park)
Abstract: Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs can enhance resilience to extreme weather events by establishing natural infrastructure such as forests and wetlands. I investigate the effectiveness of the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) in the United States in mitigating crop losses due to flooding through the restoration of riparian buffers and wetlands. By leveraging variation in the timing of the program’s introduction across counties, I find that CREP reduced flooded crop acres by 39 percent and the extent of damage on those acres by 26 percent during the initial 11 years of program implementation. The flood mitigation benefits of CREP generated financial spillover effects to the federal crop insurance program, saving $94 million in indemnity payouts that would have otherwise been paid to insured farmers. Two-thirds of these benefits resulted from reduced flood damage to cropland in production, with the remaining benefits arising from taking at-risk cropland out of production. The benefits varied spatially and temporally depending on the duration of program availability, extent of program participation, and adoption of alternative risk management strategies. Overall, these findings underscore the critical role of PES programs and natural infrastructure in facilitating climate change adaptation.
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2023
Fang-Yu Yeh, "Map Updates and Flood Events on Kentucky's Housing Market" (University of Kentucky)
Abstract: Flood events are the most common and costly natural disasters in the U.S., affecting millions of individuals each year. At the end of July 2022, several counties in Eastern Kentucky were hit by the “1-in-1000 year” flood event, which claimed more than 30 deaths and destroyed hundreds of homes, bridges, and roads. Most residents in this area do not have flood insurance because they are not in a flood zone. With extreme weather trending more noticeably in recent years, assessing the flood risk belief associated with flood maps is important for land-use regulations and flood preparation plans. This paper contributes to the literature by studying the effects of both the flood map changes and flooding events on Kentucky’s housing market and by comparing the changes in flood discount between flood-prone areas and non-flood-prone areas. Using Zillow’s ZTRAX property transaction data and FEMA’s floodplain maps, I show that housing values decrease by 6.5% when a property is mapped into a floodplain in an area that has experienced a large flood within a year and increase by 4% when a property is removed from a flood zone in an area without flooding recently. However, the housing prices do not rebound when mapped out from a floodplain in a flood-prone area or drop when assigned into a flood zone in a less flood-prone area. The findings imply that it is important for FEMA to keep the flood maps updated as individuals update risk beliefs in response to map updates and recent flooding. With the increased frequency and intensity of floods due to climate change, the benefits of more frequent updates on the information allow individuals to assess their risks and communities to prepare for future floodplain management more accurately.
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Richard Zerbe Distinguished Service Award
Voluntary organizations like the SBCA are created by, and thrive through, the efforts of individuals. More so than any other person, the SBCA owes its success to the efforts of Richard Zerbe. Not only did he conceive of the value that would be provided to scholars, practitioners, and society from an organization dedicated to promoting the appropriate use of BCA, he also took steps to create it. Working with the Evans School at the University of Washington and aided by the generous support of the MacArthur Foundation, he launched the SBCA with great success. The Board of Directors sought to honor his contributions by creating the Richard Zerbe Distinguished Service Award in 2014 to be awarded as appropriate to individuals who make significant contributions to helping the SBCA further its mission.
Award Recipients
Outstanding Achievement Award
In 2016, the SBCA Board of Directors created the Outstanding Achievement Award to be awarded as appropriate to individuals who make significant contributions to the field of benefit-cost analysis.
Award Recipients
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