Christopher Woodruff and colleagues win Victor Urquidi Prize in Economics
Congratulations to Professor Christopher Woodruff, who has been awarded the 2019 Victor Urquidi Prize in Economics by the Collegio de Mexico with his colleagues Joyce Sadka and Enrique Seira of ITAM for their research on the functioning of Mexico's labour courts.
The prize was awarded for their paper, Information and Bargaining Through Agents: Experimental Evidence from Mexico’s Labor Courts.
The paper sought to shed light on the causes of the heavy backlog of cases in Mexico's labour courts and the effect of different interventions. The researchers found that providing plaintiffs with information on predicted case outcomes and asking them to meet with court conciliators increased settlement rates. Drawing on the results, the Mexican government reformed the national labour law in May 2019.
The 200,000-peso prize is awarded annually to a paper in English or Spanish, authored or co-authored by a Mexican national, on a topic related to economics and of relevance to Mexico.