Joahnnes Boehm, who joined our Department of Economics in 2015 was awarded the prize for his paper: The Impact of Contract Enforcement Costs on Outsourcing and Aggregate Productivity

The Young Economist Awards are decided by the Board of Administration of the Austrian Economic Association and awarded at their annual conference to researchers who have accomplished outstanding research under the age of 35.

Johannes Boehm, Assistant Professor at SciencesPo, is specialized in macroeconomics, international trade and industrial organisation.

His paper studies how the cost of enforcing supplier contracts shapes the boundaries of firms, and how much this matters for a country's level of development. In countries where the courts are slow and expensive, firms outsource relatively less when they rely heavily on formal enforcement of the sourcing contracts. This, in turn, lowers their productivity. A quantitative exercise reveals that some developing countries suffer badly due to these mechanisms, and could benefit substantially from improving the speed and efficiency of their courts.

• Read the entire paper here (PDF)
• More about Johannes Boehm and his research
• More about the Sciences Po Department of Economics
• More information about the Austrian Economic Association's Young Economist Award (in German)