The Adam Smith Award

Each year since 1982, the NABE president has selected an Adam Smith Award recipient based upon leadership in the profession and the application of economic principles and knowledge in the workplace and policy arenas. The recipient delivers a lecture at NABE’s annual meeting, which is printed in a subsequent issue of Business Economics.

 

1982    Herbert Stein
 AEI and University of  Virginia		   “Conservatives, Economists and Neckties”
       
1983 Charles P. Kindleberger
Massachusetts Institute of Technology		   “Was Adam Smith a Monetarist or a Keynesian?”
       
1984 Karl Brunner
University of Rochester		   “The Poverty of Nations”
       
1985 Robert M. Solow
Massachusetts Institute of Technology		   “The Unemployment of Nations”
       
1986 Paul W. McCracken
University of Michigan		   “Reluctant to Prosper”
       
1987 George J. Stigler
University of Chicago		   “The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency”
       
1988 James M. Buchanan
George Mason University		   “On the Structure of An Economy: A Reemphasis of   Some Classical Foundations”
       
1989 Milton Friedman
The Hoover Institution		   “The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community”
       
1990 James Tobin
Yale University		   “Living and Trading with Japan”
       
1991 Gary S. Becker
University of Chicago		   “Education, Labor Force Quality and the Economy”
       
1992 Vaclav Klaus
Czech Republic		   “The Transformation of Eastern Europe”
       
1993 Martin Feldstein
National Bureau of Economic Research		   “Rethinking Tax Policy”
       
1994 Douglass C. North
Washington University		   “Economic Theory in a Dynamic Economic World”
       
1995 Paul R. Krugman
Stanford University		   "What Difference Does Globalization Make?"
       
1996 Murray L. Weidenbaum
Washington University		   "An Ambitious Agenda for Economic Growth"
       
1997 Michael E. Porter
Harvard Business School		   “Location, Clusters, and the ‘New’ Microeconomics of Competition"
       
1998 Michael J. Boskin 
Stanford University		   “Capitalism and its Discontents”
       
1999 Alan S. Blinder
The Brookings Institution		   "How the Economy Came to Resemble the Model"
       
2000 Alice Rivlin
The Brookings Institutions		   "The Challenge of Affluence"
       
2001 Henry Kaufman
Henry Kaufman & Co		   "What Would Adam Smith Say Now?"
       
2002 George Kaufman
Loyola University of Chicago
Edward J. Kane
Boston College 
George Benston
Emory University		   "The Use of Economic Analysis to Affect Public Economic Policy"
"What Economic Principles Should Policymakers in Other Countries Have Learned from the S&L Mess?"
"How Much Regulation of Financial Services Do We Really Need?"
       
2003 Allan Meltzer
Carnegie Mellon University		   "Leadership and Progress"
       
2004 Lawrence Klein
University of Pennsylvania		   "The State of Economic Linkages: A Retrospective and Prospective View"
       
2005 Dale Jorgenson
Harvard University		   " Potential Growth of the U.S. Economy: Will the Productivity Resurgence Continue?"
       
2006 William Poole 
Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis		   "The Monetary Policy Model"
       
2007 John B. Taylor
Stanford University		   "The Explanatory Power of Monetary Policy Rules"
       
2008 Michael Mussa
Peterson Institute for International Economics		   “Adam Smith and the Political Economy of a Modern Financial Crisis”
       
2009 Lawrence Summers 
National Economic Council		   "Principles for Economic Recovery and Renewal"
       
2010 Janet Yellen 
Federal Reserve Board		   "Macroprudential Supervision and Monetary Policy in the Post-crisis World"
       
2011 Ken Rogoff
Harvard University		   "Long Run Implications of a Euro Implosion for the Global Monetary System"
       
2012 George Soros
Institute for New Economic Thinking		   "A New Economic Thinking" 
       
 2013 Roger Ferguson
TIAA-CREF 		   "Financial Services and the Trust Deficit: Why the Industry Should Make Better Governance a Top Priority"
       
2014 Ben Bernanke
Brookings Institution		   "A Conversation between Ben Bernanke and Kai Ryssdal"
       
2015 Edward C. Prescott
Arizona State University		    "Northern America's Production of Technology Capital is Transforming the World Economy"
       
2016 William R. White
OECD		    "Ultra-Easy Money: Digging the Hole Deeper?" 
       
2017 Raghuram Rajan
The University of Chicago
Booth School of Business		    "Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Role of Central Banks"
       
2018 Carmen Reinhart
Harvard Kennedy School		    "Financial Crises: Past and Future"
       
2019 Arthur B. Laffer
Laffer Associates		    "Supply-Side Economics"
       
2020 Susan Athey
Stanford Graduate School of Business		    "Artificial Intelligence and the Economic Recovery"
       
2021 Hal Varian
Google		    "Economics at Google: The First Ten Years"
       
2022 John A. List
The University of Chicago and Walmart		   "The Science Is Calling Ideas"
       
2023 Hélène Rey
London Business School 		   "Global Financial Cycle and the Role of the Dollar"
       
 2024 Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics Radio
Steven D. Levitt, University of Chicago		  

"The Genius of Freakonomics" (Dubner)
"The Power of Natural Experiments" (Levitt)
       
 2025 Jerome H. Powell
Federal Reserve Board