Sir Dave Ramsden announces the winner of the 2014-15 Rybczynski Prize

Sir Dave Ramsden CBE, Director General and Chief Economic Advisor at HM Treasury, and President of the Society of Professional Economists, has announced the winner of this year’s Rybczynski Prize for the best piece of writing on an issue of importance to business economists.

 He said the judges had nominated a short list of five from a strong field of entries for the Prize. Listed by author in alphabetical order they were:

• Rebecca Driver,  Five facts about how economies work and what they mean for the UK’s membership of the EU
• Tim Harford,  How to see into the future
• Qu Hongbin and John Zhu,  China Economic Spotlight Rebalancing - a dangerous obsession
• Michael Howell,  Potholes Along the Financial Silk Road
• Ian Stewart, Debapratim De, Alex Cole, Technology and people: The great job-creating machine

The winning entry was the essay by Tim Harford, author and columnist, chosen by the Council of the Society of Professional Economists for its illuminating examination of the purposes and practice of economic forecasting set in the contexts of the success – or otherwise – of its early practitioners and of more recent and more systematic research into the activity of forecasting political and economic events.

Sir Dave Ramsden congratulated Mr Harford on winning this year’s Prize. He said that Mr Harford followed in the footsteps of many outstanding economists who had won the Prize in previous years and that we could look forward to reading his work on the Society’s website. He said he will be delighted to present Mr Harford with his prize at a major Society event to be announced later in the year.

He went on to commend the other entrants for the high standard of entries to the competition. While that had made the Council’s task in choosing the winning entry more difficult, it showed the continuing invaluable contribution being made by professional economists to the understanding of economic issues and to the development of economic policy and business strategies.