The Ronald Coase Institute Award for Outstanding Achievement recognizes annually the graduate of the Institute's workshops who best exemplifies the impact of the Institute’s training and continuing scholarly support.

The award includes a $1,000 prize and a trophy of recognition. It was created through the ideas and generosity of an admirer of the Institute. Final decisions are made by the Board of Directors.

The winner of the 2024 Award for Outstanding Achievement is Alberto Simpser (2005 Barcelona workshop). He accepted the award during the annual alumni conference dinner in Sydney, Australia on August 27, 2025.

About Alberto Simpser

Alberto Simpser is a professor of political science and department chair at the Department of Political Science at ITAM in Mexico City. He previously taught at the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He has been a residential Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study of Toulouse at the Toulouse School of Economics, a Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University, and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He holds a PhD in political Ssience and an MA in economics from Stanford University, and a B.Sc.in environmental engineering from Harvard College. Before entering academia, he worked on energy issues at McKinsey & Co.

Simpser's research addresses politico-economic problems in developing countries, including corruption, electoral manipulation, governance and accountability failures, and the relationship between institutions, culture, and behavior. His work has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, and Annual Review of Political Science, among others. His books, Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections and Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (co-edited with Professor Tom Ginsburg), have been published in different series by Cambridge University Press. He has served on the Council of the American Political Science Association and the Planning Committee of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems; he is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Latin American Public Opinion Project and an Affiliate of J-PAL.

Simpser was a participant in the 2005 workshop in Barcelona, and has served as faculty for three subsequent workshops, as well as in conferences and panels of the Coase Institute.

Acceptance Speech by Alberto Simpser

I am extremely honored and delighted to receive the Ronald Coase Institute Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement. The Institute has played a very special role in my professional and personal life. I feel deeply grateful for the opportunities the Institute has opened for me to learn valuable lessons, make new and lasting friendships, and travel to faraway lands.

In 2005 I was a doctoral candidate preparing to defend my dissertation. While I do not recall exactly how I learned about RCI’s workshops, I applied, was accepted, and participated in that summer’s edition in Barcelona. Many things that are seldom addressed in normal academic training were discussed at that wworkshop, made a lot of sense to me then, and continue to be part of the arsenal of lessons that I apply in my work and impart to my students.  What in your work is of value to others? Are you able to communicate it clearly and pithily? I can hear Alexandra Benham’s kind voice when these and related questions pop up in my mind.

Looking back two full decades after, I am convinced that I received much more than I ever expected from my participation in Barcelona, in various subsequent workshops where I was faculty, and in different events at Chicago and elsewhere. Perhaps most importantly, I made professional friendships with colleagues and mentors who were close to, but not exactly in my field; close to, but not exactly my age; not from my university; and not from my country of origin, Mexico. Opportunities to create close ties of this nature---with academics who are neither our direct peers, competitors, or supervisors---are surprisingly difficult to come by but, I now believe, invaluable. On the intellectual level, these ties exposed me to different levels of experience and wisdom in the academic profession, and to disciplines and subdisciplines beyond my own. Some of these blossomed into lasting friendships I feel lucky to have come into. The warmth of the RCI leadership, coupled with the ethos of collaboration and mutual support they established, attracted a very special set of people.

It was through RCI that I met wonderful colleagues in Russia, worked in the Philippines, and traveled to Singapore and Taiwan. It was through RCI that I had the opportunity to personally meet very special people at the University of Chicago, where I had my first faculty position in the department of political science. These included several Nobel laureaates as well as other very distinguished scholars in economics, business, and law.  It was through RCI that I connected with the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics and its stimulating, interdisciplinary conferences. It is also through RCI, via Mary Shirley and Claude Ménard, that I had the opportunity to contribute a chapter to the new edition of the Handbook of New Institutional Economics, a few dozen pages away from the texts of various Nobel Prize winners. Who would have thought!

Finally, it is RCI’s fault that I am traveling far from my home in Mexico City. And I am delighted for it. Receiving this award fills me with joy, not least because it is a homecoming. RCI shaped me and gave me a warm, enriching home base within the large, wild world of academia---a feeling I am certain is shared by many others. I want to express my sincere gratitude to Alexandra Benham, Lee Benham, and Mary Shirley for their continued leadership and commitment to the Institute and its alumni. This has been a remarkable journey. I look forward to the next opportunity to collaborate and to the next time we meet.