Inspired by the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark Medal, Le Monde, French daily, and the Cercle des économistes, created the prize in 2000, to highlight the work of France’s best young economists and to make better known the multiple facets of economic science.

In awarding the 2023 Best Young Economist Prize to Julia Cagé ex aequo, with Vincent Pons (Harvard Business School), the jury has chosen to throw its projector on a particular research area in economics: works that analyse the current crisis in democracy. This area is firmly rooted in the concepts and methods of economics but also falls under the purview of political science – its current prevalence is related to growing concerns about the relationship between the economy and political power.

The list of concerns the Cercle des économistes evokes - the impact of the concentration of the media on the quality of information; the spread of disinformation on social networks; the funding of democracy and determinants of electoral participation - reads very much like a research statement that could be drafted by Julia Cagé!

Published in the leading journals, Julia Cagé’s work focuses on media economics, political participation and political attitudes.

In 2021 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her 5-year project Campaign Finance, Information and Influence: A ComprehensIve Approach Using Individual-Level Data and Computer Science Tools (PARTICIPATE) which studies, notably, blindspots in the economic literature on the funding of political parties and the representativity of candidates for their electoral campaigns.

Her latest research projects, selected recently by McCourt Institute for substantial grants in 2022 and 2023, explore issues related to information in the digital age (the spread of disinformation on social media and online news) but also look at resolving them (how to slow down disinformation, how to ensure access to quality information).

Julia Cagé is also well-known to the general public for her books in which she proposes concrete, radical solutions after meticulously scrutinizing her topic. She has authored three books on the media, one of which - Saving the Media. Capitalism, Crowdfunding and Democracy (Paris, Le Seuil, 2015) - was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Best Book on Media of the 2016 edition of the “Prix des Assises du Journalisme”. Her latest critically acclaimed work « The Price of Democracy » (at Fayard in 2018, English edition at Harvard University Press, 2020) was awarded the Prix Pétrarque de l’essai by Le Monde and France Culture in 2019.

Proposing a solution to the problems she rigorously analyses using the economist’s toolbox, is a hallmark of Julia Cagé’s work. This aligns with the Best Young Economist Prize: the award showcases the ability of the laureate to trace a useful lead in answering the most pressing socioeconomic questions of the day.

With the awarding of the 2023 “Meilleure Jeune Economiste” Prize to Julia Cagé, the Department's permanent faculty members have been distinguished by the Cercle des économistes 12 times – seven faculty members are laureates of the prize (in 2020, Isabelle Mejean was the last to win it) and another five have been nominated for it.

Congratulations to Julia Cagé as well as to her co-laureate Vincent Pons!

Read more about Julia Cagé and her research 

Read Le Monde interview with Julia Cagé and Vincent Pons, co-laureates (May 22nd, 2023, in French)
Read more about the Cercle des économistes: Prix du Meilleur Jeune Économiste

Julia Cagé is Associate Professor of Economics (with tenure) the Department of Economics and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), where she also leads the Research and Policy Network on “Media Plurality”. She is co-director of the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP)’s “Evaluation of Democracy” research group. She has published articles in journals such as the Review of Economic Studies, the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Public Economics.