Relation of early career performance and recognition to the probability of winning the Nobel Prize in economics

To explore the relation between early career performance or recognition and receiving the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, we compare winners of the John Bates Clark Medal, the most prestigious early career recognition for economists, with other successful scholars. The initial comparison combines JBCM winners with scholars published in leading economics journals, controlling for educational background (institution conferring the Ph.D.) and publication and citation success. We then narrow the comparison group down to those given relatively early recognition (based on age category) in the form of other major awards. Lastly, we compare the JBCM awardees with synthetic counterfactuals that best resemble their pre-award academic career performance. All three analyses provide strong support for the notion that winning the JBCM is related to receiving the Nobel Prize, the award of which is also correlated with early career performance success as measured by number of publications and citations.