The Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology is awarded for the best work in political methodology presented at any political science conference during the preceding year.
| 2021 Winner | |
| Recipient |
Avidit Acharya (Stanford)
Kirk Bansak (UC San Diego)
Jens Hainmueller (Stanford)
|
| Work | "Combining Outcome-Based and Preference-Based Matching: A Constrained Priority Mechanism" |
| Citation | Acharya et al.'s paper opens up a new opportunity to connect political methodology, machine learning, and mechanism design — the latter is a lively field in Economics, and has clear implications for designing real-world institutions. This paper tackles one of the most important problems in society and in political science — refugee settlements and integration — by designing a mechanism to allocate refugees while taking into account the preferences of both refugees and planners. Moreover, the paper is notable in that it provides three significant contributions: (1) it connects two large literatures that have been studied separately, (2) it provides a new methodological/theoretical contribution, and (3) it provides an important application (the authors are implementing it with the Dutch government). |
| Selection committee | Skyler Cranmer (Ohio State), Naoki Egami (Princeton), and Anand Sokhey (Colorado, chair) |
Past Recipients
| Year | Recipient | Work |
| 2020 | Dean Knox (Princeton), Christopher Lucas (Wash U) | "A Dynamic Model of Speech for the Social Sciences" |
| 2019 | Naoki Egami (Princeton) | "Identification of Causal Diffusion Effects using Stationary Causal Directed Acyclic Graphs" |
| 2018 | Fredrik Savje (Yale), Peter Aronow (Yale), and Michael Hudgens (UNC) | "A Folk Theorem on Interference in Experiments" |
| 2017 | Matthew Blackwell (Harvard) | "Instrumental Variable Methods for Conditional Effects and Causal Interaction in Voter Mobilization Experiments" |
| 2016 | Marc Rotkovic (Princeton), Dustin Tingley (Harvard) | "Sparse Estimation with Uncertainty: Subgroup Analysis in Large Dimensional Designs" |
| 2015 | Sebastian Calonico, Matias Cattaneo, and Rocio Titiunik | "Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression-Discontinuity Designs" |
| 2014 | Margaret E. Roberts (UC San Diego), Brandon M. Stewart (Harvard), Dustin Tingley (Harvard), Christopher Lucas (Harvard), Jetson Leder-Luis (Caltech), Shana Gadarian (Syracuse), Bethany Albertson (UT Austin), and David Rand (Yale) | "Topic Models for Open-Ended Survey Responses with Applications to Experiments" |
| 2013 | Adam Glynn and Konstantin Kashin (Harvard) | "Front-door Versus Back-door Adjustment with Unmeasured Confounding: Bias Formulas for Front-door and Hybrid Adjustments." |
| 2012 | Thomas Gschwend, James Lo, and Sven-Oliver Proksch (University of Mannheim) | "A Common Left-Right Scale for Voters and Parties in Europe." |
| 2011 | Robert J. Franzese, Jr. (University of Michigan), Jude C. Hays, Aya Kachi (University of Illinois) | "Modeling History-Dependent Network Coevolution" |
| 2010 | Jong Hee Park (University of Chicago) | "Joint Modeling of Dynamic and Cross-Sectional Heterogeneity: Introducing Hidden Markov Panel Models" |
| 2009 | John Freeman (University of Minnesota), and Jeff Gill (Washington University in St. Louis) | "Dynamic Elicited Priors for Updating Covert Networks." |
| 2008 | Kevin Quinn (Harvard) | "What Can be Learned from a Simple Table? Bayesian Inference and Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Effects from 2x2 and 2x2xK Tables in the Presence of Unmeasured Confounding." |
| 2007 | Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller (Harvard) | "Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program." |
| 2006 | Michael Penn Colaresi (Michigan State), Michael Crespin (University of Georgia), Burt L. Monroe (Michigan State), Kevin M. Quinn (Harvard), and Dragomir R. Radev (University of Michigan) | "An Automated Method of Topic-Coding Legislative Speech Over Time With Application to the 105th-108th U.S. Senate" |
| 2005 | Alexis Diamond (Harvard) and Jasjeet S. Sekhon (UC Berkeley) | "Genetic Matching for Estimating Causal Effects: A General Multivariate Matching Method for Achieving Balance in Observational Studies." |
| 2004 | Henry Brady, John McNulty (UC Berkeley) | "A “Natural Experiment” on the Costs of Voting: Methodologies for Analyzing Observational Data when the Treatment is Nearly Randomized." |
| 2003 | Won-Ho Park (University of Michigan) | "Estimation of Voter Transition Rates and Ecological Inference." |
| 2002 | Janet Box-Steffensmeier (Ohio State), and Suzanna De Boef (Penn State) | "A Monte Carlo Analysis for Recurrent Events Data." |
| 2001 | Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn (University of Washington) | "Bayesian Learning about Ideal Points of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 1953-1999." |
| 2000 | Curtis S. Signorino, Kuzey Yilmaz (University of Rochester) | "Strategic Misspecification in Discrete Choice Models." |
| 1999 | Nathaniel Beck (UC San Diego), Gary King (Harvard), and Langche Zeng (Harvard University on leave from GWU) | "Improving Quantitative Studies of International Conflict: A Conjecture." |
| 1998 | Dean Lacy (Ohio State) | "A Theory of Nonseparable Preferences in Survey Responses." |
| 1997 | Gary King (Harvard) | "A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior From Aggregate Data." |
| 1996 | Nathaniel Beck (UC San Diego), and Richard Tucker (Indiana) | "Conflict in Space and Time: Time-Series-Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable." |
| 1996 | Walter R Mebane, Jr., and Jonathan Wand (Cornell University) | "Markov Chain Models for Rolling Cross-section Data: How Campaign Events and Political Awareness Affect Vote Intentions and Partisanship in the United States and Canada." |
| 1995 | Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier (Ohio State), Renee Smith (University of Rochester) | "The Microfoundations of Aggregate Partisanship." |
| 1995 | Bradley Palmquist (Harvard) | "Respecification Approaches to Ecological Inference: A Comparison of Control Variables and the Quadratic Model." |
Past Selection Committees
| Year | Committee |
| 2020 | Anand Sokhey (Colorado, chair), Naoki Egami (Princeton), and Skyler Cranmer (Ohio State) |
| 2019 | Matthew Blackwell (Harvard), Marc Ratkovic (Princeton), and Fredrik Savje (Yale) |
| 2018 | Matthew Blackwell (Chair), Marc Ratkovic, Fredrik Savje |
| 2017 | Michael Peress (Chair), Matt Blackwell, Marc Ratkovic |
| 2016 | Michael Peress (Chair), Suzanne Linn, Brandon Stewart |
| 2015 | Jake Bowers (Chair), Adam Glynn, Xun Pang |
| 2014 | Jake Bowers (Chair), Adam Glynn, Xun Pang |
| 2013 | Jay Goodliffe (Chair), Jong Hee Park, Michael Peress |
| 2012 | Jay Goodliffe (Chair), Jong Hee Park, Michael Peress |
| 2011 | Matthew Lebo (Chair), Kenneth Kollman, Betsy Sinclair |
| 2010 | Matthew Lebo (Chair), Kenneth Kollman, Betsy Sinclair |
| 2009 | Kenneth Kollman (Chair), Betsy Sinclair, Matthew Lebo |
| 2008 | Kenneth Kollman (Chair) |
| 2007 | Michael Ward (Chair), Michael Crespin (winner from previous year), Patrick Brandt |
| 2006 | Michael Ward (Chair), Alexis Diamond (winner from previous year), Robert Luskin |