The Bernoulli Awards
FOR UNDERGRADUATE STATISTICAL RESEARCH
a campus-wide competition to encourage academic and professional success
Prizes range from $1,000 to $5,000.
ABOUT
The Bernoulli Awards is an annual competition that recognizes outstanding research papers authored by undergraduate students who use statistical methods to analyze an applied problem judged to be important, timely, and original. It gets its name from the Bernoulli random variable, the most common random variable in statistics.
Inaugurated in 2008, the competition is funded by an anonymous alumnus to recognize Notre Dame undergraduates poised to submit research papers to peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.
“I graduated in a recession and easily found a job—because I showed interviewers the statistical research paper that I had published. ... Plan for your future by competing for a Bernoulli Award.”
SELECTION PROCESS
Awards decisions are made by a panel of Notre Dame faculty, including at least one in each College from which students apply. There is no set number of awards made. Over the past three years, one out of every five students has won at least an honorable mention.
FIRST PRIZES: $5,000
SECOND PRIZES: $2,500
HONORABLE MENTIONS: $1,000
Judges focus on whether papers have the potential to be published in well-respected, peer-reviewed outlets in the relevant discipline. Special emphasis is placed on:
(1) the intellectual merit of the research question addressed;
(2) the use of appropriate, state-of-the-art statistical techniques; and
(3) the significance and/or novelty of the results.
Winning papers are posted on the Department of Economics website, although the authors still retain the right to publish them in other outlets.
ELIGIBILITY
All undergraduate students from across the University are encouraged to enter. Submissions to the Bernoulli Awards are neither limited to economics majors nor to students majoring in the College of Arts and Letters.
Papers can have more than one author (in which case the prize is split equally) but cannot have coauthors not currently enrolled as undergraduates at the University.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS
April 23, 2012
SUBMISSION DETAILS
Students who would like to have a research paper considered for a Bernoulli prize must submit it as an electronic file in PDF format to econ@nd.edu. The text of the paper must be in 12-point font, double-spaced, and with standard one-inch margins. There is no explicit page limit, but submissions of not more than 50 pages are preferred.
A submission must also be accompanied by the name of a member of the Notre Dame faculty who endorses it. If the paper is based on research conducted in a Notre Dame professor’s laboratory, the supervising professor should separately submit a brief letter indicating the unique contribution of the student and publication plans for the research (anticipated authorship and outlet).
2011 Winners
First Prize:
Libby Koerbel,” Crossâregional trade effects: A comparative analysis of total factor productivity growth in Hong Kong and Shanghai"
Second Prize:
Matthew Conti, "Effect of Disease Management Programs on Medicaid costs"
Honorable Mentions:
Joshua Bell, “Stock Prices, Prediction Markets, and Information Efficiency: Evidence from Health Care Reform”
Michael Carter, “God and Mammon: Examining the Catholic Church’s Influence on Macroeconomic Growth Rates under the Influence of Liberation Theology"
Jessica Hedrich, “The Heterogeneous Impact of the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff: Looking Beyond the Mean”
Andrew Kidd, “The Effect of the Child Tax Credit on the Labor Supply of Mothers”
Sean Sall, “Maternal Labor Supply and the Availability of Public Pre-K: Evidence from the Introduction of Prekindergarten into American Public Schools”
Brian Sheridan, “Lender of Last Resort: An Examination of the Federal Reserve’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility”
