Cairncross Prize
The Society offers a prize of £1000 for the best paper by a younger member of the Society delivered at its Annual Conference. This prize is offered in memory of Sir Alexander Cairncross, KCMG, FBA, Hon FRSE.
During his long and distinctively active career Sir Alec Cairncross made distinguished contributions in several walks of life – as Economic Adviser to the Government (1961-64), Head of the Government Economic Service (1964-69), Master of St Peters College Oxford (1969-78), President of the British Association (1970-71) and writer of several books on economic policy – and by no means least at the University of Glasgow as Professor of Applied Economics (1950-61) and subsequently its Chancellor from 1972 to 1996.
He also contributed signally to the development of the Scottish Economic Society. In 1954 he became the first Editor of the Society's Scottish Journal of Political Economy, a post he held until 1961. A Vice President from 1962 he became President from 1969 to 1973, and remained an Honorary Vice President thereafter.
The Scottish Economic Society instituted a Prize Essay Competition to express its commitment to the development of the discipline, directed at encouraging younger members of the profession. It chose to call this the Sir Alexander Cairncross Prize, to mark the contribution which he had personally made to the Society and to the discipline. It was first competed for in 1998, sadly the year of Sir Alec's death.
The prize-winning essay is also guaranteed publication in the Scottish Journal of Political Economy.
The 2009 Sir Alec Cairncross Memorial Prize was awarded to Jung-Yuan Chiou of IMT Lucca for a paper entitled "Technology Adoption and Fuzzy Patent Rights". As a first-time event, the prize was handed over on the first night of the conference -- by none other than Frances Cairncross, Sir Alec Cairncross's daughter and rector of Exeter College, Oxford.
The 2008 Cairncross prize winner is Purba Mukerji of the University of San Francisco for her paper on "Trade liberalization and the extensive margin". The 2007 prize was awarded to Silke Anger for her paper on "Overtime Work as a Signalling Device".
