Dumebi Uzoabaka Ochem and Daniele Rinaldo were awarded for their extraordinary academic work.
This year and for the second time, our students have been honoured with the Rudi Dornbusch and Leonid Hurwicz Prizes, which are given to best master and PhD theses respectively.
Dumebi Uzoabaka's received the Rudi Dornbusch for her dissertation on "The Effects of Foreign Aid on Sub-national Development: A Quantile Regression Approach".
Daniele Rinaldo, PhD in Development Economics, was awarded the Leonid Hurwicz Prize for his work: "Essays in Non-Gaussian Economics".
Their thesis supervisor, Professor Jean-Louis Arcand, had nothing but praise for the students:
Dumebi has produced a superb piece of work that highlights her capacity to master highly policy-relevant, though highly technical literature, and her contribution was made using sophisticated econometric techniques.
Daniele's thesis is one of the best theses that I have had the pleasure of following (and with it I have reached number 52, and counting...). I have no doubt that this is only the beginning for him.
Dumebi Uzoabaka looked back on two memorable years spent at the Institute and thanked her adviser:
I am incredibly honoured to receive this award for my dissertation. I thank my supervisor, Professor Jean-Louis Arcand, for his invaluable guidance, as well as my classmates and family, for their continuous support and for making the past two years at the Graduate Institute truly memorable.
Daniele Rinaldo, who now works as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute, also expressed his gratitude towards his advisers and his appreciation for the great Leonid Hurwicz:
I am honoured to receive the Leonid Hurwicz Prize for my PhD thesis. I am particularly pleased since my doctoral research is focused on modeling uncertainty in economic systems, the same field in which Hurwicz made his most relevant contributions. I thank Professor Jean-Louis Arcand, my thesis supervisor, for his continuous support and inspiration, as well as Professor Max-Olivier Hongler and everyone at the Institute for these wonderful years of exploration and knowledge.
We congratulate both of our fellows for their remarkable success!
Rudi Dornbusch was an alumnus of the Graduate Institute and one of the world's most influential international economists.
Leonid Hurwicz was also an alumnus of the Institute. He received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2007, together with Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson, for their formulation of "mechanism design theory".