Economist Melissa Dell wins 2020 Clark Medal
Harvard economist Melissa Dell, who studies the long shadow economic history casts on societies, has received the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal. The prize, administered by the American Economic Association, is awarded annually to an American economist under the age of 40 for making significant contributions to thought and knowledge in the field. Dell, 37, examines how long past conflicts, economic conditions, and institutions can have lasting impacts on a nation. She uses empirical evidence to quantify those effects. Her research, which has focused largely on Latin America and Southeast Asia, ranges from work on how forced labor in Peru and Bolivia from the 1500s to the 1800s has conditioned current development, to how policies enforced by the Mexican government against the country’s illicit drug trade has changed patterns of violence and trafficking and affected local economic development. “One of the key questions I am trying to better understand is how poverty...