ZEW Awards Economic Research Paper - Benny Geys Receives the Heinz König Young Scholar Award Endowed with a Prize Money of 5,000 Euros in Mannheim

The Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim has awarded the Heinz König Young Scholar Award for the third time. This year, Benny Geys, Ph.D. from the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) received the research award for his paper about "Looking across Borders: A Test of Spatial Interdependence using Local Government Tax Efficiency Ratings".

The annual ZEW award comes with a prize money of 5,000 Euros and additionally includes the offer to do research at the ZEW for several months. This year, the prize is sponsored by the Deere & Company European Office celebrating its 50 anniversary in Europe.

In his empirically oriented paper, Geys applies modern spatial econometric procedures. Drawing on the example of Flemish communities he demonstrates just how aware citizens are of which local and regional authorities are efficient providers of services and which are not. Geys shows that the views held by citizens in this context influence their voting behaviour and thus exert political pressure on players. There is another result of the research paper that fits this pattern. This is confirmed by a second key study finding which shows that the local authorities situated around efficient local authorities tend in turn to become increasingly efficient which suggests that this characteristic is spatially projected. The study illustrates that it would be fair to assume that local public services are subject to competition in terms of their efficiency. In his laudatory speech, Ingolf Prüfer, Personnel Director of the Deere & Company European Office, extolled the methodological depth of Gey's work: "The results are worthwhile and relevant to economic policy. The analysis enriches the existing literature which to date has merely dealt with tax and spending competition."

The Heinz König Young Scholar Award is named after the ZEW founding director, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Heinz König who died in 2002. The prize awards excellent empirical papers by young economists. The ZEW does not want to add another prize to the wide range of awards for established researchers but prefers to sponsor young economists.

The Heinz König Young Scholar Award is awarded at the annual ZEW Summer Workshop taking place in Mannheim. The Summer Workshop's aim is to qualify young economists. A wide range of papers are submitted and the best are chosen in a hard-fought selection process. About 12 to 16 young economists from Germany and abroad are invited to Mannheim. There they can discuss their papers with other young economists as well as specially invited established researchers. The best submitted paper is awarded the Heinz König Young Scholar Award.