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BSE Scientific Council Chair Matthew Jackson awarded BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award
The economist has been chosen to receive this honor “for his pioneering work on illuminating the role of networks in economic and social life.”
The BBVA Foundation has awarded the 2021 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category to Matthew O. Jackson “for his pioneering work on illuminating the role of networks in economic and social life.” Jackson is the William D. Eberle Economics Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Chair of the Barcelona School of Economics Scientific Council.
Jackson’s work has inspired a large body of empirical and theoretical literature in which networks play a central role, with implications for the understanding of financial markets, economic development, and a host of other phenomena with economic and social impact.
A new dimension to economic analysis
Barcelona School of Economics Emeritus Research Professor Salvador Barberà (UAB and BSE) is not only among Jackson’s nominators for the award, but was also his very first co-author. He notes that “before Professor Jackson, many social scientists had incorporated the network approach, but without a great deal of rigor. And economics, by and large, had focused on analyzing how individuals relate to each other through the markets. But the use of network theory adds a whole new dimension to economic analysis, and completely changes the way we look at markets.”
For Barberà, who has continued to collaborate closely with the awardee, the sea change brought by the introduction of the network approach made itself felt “more formally at first, in an abstract, mathematical fashion, then more empirically and experimentally across a multitude of areas.”
Jury and nominators
The jury of the Frontiers of Knowledge Award was chaired by the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics Eric S. Maskin, Adams University Professor at Harvard University (United States), with Professor of Economics Manuel Arellano of the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies of Banco de España (Spain) as Secretary of the committee. The jury was completed with the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics Jean Tirole, Honorary Chairman of the Fondation Jean-Jacques Laffont-Toulouse School of Economics (France), Andreu Mas-Colell, professor of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University and founder of the Barcelona School of Economics (Spain), Lucrezia Reichlin, Professor of Economics at the London Business School (United Kingdom), Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, Elihu Professor of Economics at Yale University (United States), and Fabrizio Zilibotti, Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics at Yale University (United States).
The nominators for the candidacy were Salvador Barberà, Emeritus Professor of the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies, UAB (Spain), José Manuel Galán, on behalf of COMSOTEC (Sociotechnical Complex Systems Association, Spain), Teresa Garcia-Milà, Director of the Barcelona School of Economics (Spain), Andrea Ichino, on Behalf of the Department of Economics of the European University Institute (Italy), Joan Llull, on behalf of the foundation Markets, Organizations and Votes in Economics (MOVE, Spain), Francesc Obiols-Homs, Head of the Economics Department, UAB, and the late Hugo Sonnenshein, 2nd edition BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Laureate in Economics, Finance and Management.