AISSEC Awards
for Young Scholars
Francesco Pastore Young Economist Award
AISSEC announces the second edition of the young economist award in memory of Francesco Pastore, who passed away prematurely on the 13th of July 2022, at the age of 56. Former Professor of Economics at Università della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, he was also the country lead for Italy of the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and a member of the executive board of the European Association of Comparative Economic Studies (EACES) and of the Italian Association for the Study of Comparative Economic Systems (AISSEC).
Francesco Pastore was a devoted teacher and a passionate scholar. His research interests covered a variety of topics and policy issues, related in particular to the young generations. The idea is thus to commemorate his contribution by supporting young researchers and give them an opportunity to make their studies more visible.
Established in 2024, the Award is meant for the best paper presented at the AISSEC biennial conference by scholars up to 40 years of age. In the case of a jointly written paper, all authors must comply with the age requirement at the moment of submission. Each author may submit only one paper. The prize amounts to €500.
Innovative and methodologically rigorous papers adopting a comparative perspective (especially pertaining to the research fields Francesco Pastore was mainly interested in: Education, Labour, Development and Transition economics) will be subject to evaluation by a Commission comprising members of the AISSEC Executive Board and one external expert. To be considered, the authors should manifest their intention to participate in selection procedure at the stage of submission through the conference webpage. In this case, a full version of the paper is required and must be uploaded at the moment of submission via the Conference webpage, together with a declaration that the author is under the age of forty. In case of co-authored papers, each author is expected to be under the age of forty at the moment of submission, and this should be clearly stated in the accompanying declaration. The prize will be announced and awarded during the Conference, to be held in Ancona on 8-9 June 2026. The author(s) is(are) expected to present the paper at one of the Conference sessions.
Past Awards
The Second Young Economist Award was assigned during the XXIV AISSEC Scientific Conference to the following research paper: ‘Bilateral trade and voluntary environmental standards: Insights from ISO 14001 certification’, by Tamar Taralashvili and Daniela Lena (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Marche Polytechnic University, Italy).
The first Young Economist Award was assigned during the XXIII AISSEC Scientific Conference to the following research paper: The Role of Natural Hazard on Income Inequality, by Lucia Errico (Department of Economics, Statistics and Finance 'Giovanni Anania', University of Calabria, Rende, Italy), Andrea Mosca (Department of Economics, University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy), and Sandro Rondinella (Department of Economics, Statistics and Finance 'Giovanni Anania', University of Calabria, Rende, Italy).
During the past biennial Scientific Conferences, the Association assigned awards to the best doctoral degree dissertation in the field of comparative economics.
The AISSEC doctoral prize for 2016 was awarded during the 57th Annual Conference of the Italian Economic Association held in Milano (University "L. Bocconi") on 20-22 October 2016. The Committee’s final decision was to award the prize ex-aequo to Andrea Albanese (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy), for his dissertation entitled Employment of young and older workers: three policy evaluations, and to Chiara Assunta Ricci (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), for her dissertation entitled Essays on the middle class.
During the AISSEC 2014 conference the prize was awarded to Irene Monasterolo (University of Bologna, Italy), for a doctoral dissertation entitled: Analysing convergence of agricultural and rural areas in the enlarged EU: the case of Hungary.