2014

Jens Hainmueller (Stanford University)

Citation

The winner of the 2014 Society for Political Methodology Emerging Scholar Award is Jens Hainmueller from Stanford University. The committee received many strong nominations that included a number of young methodologists that were deserving of this award, but in the end we decided that the breadth and impact of Hainmueller's work made him the most distinguished choice as the winner. The committee and nominators appreciated the wide ranging nature of Hainmueller's work, including in particular his work on synthetic control and entropy balancing methods, both of which have had a major impact on applied research. Hainmueller has published multiple articles in each of Political Analysis, The American Political Science Review, and The American Journal of Political Science. He has also published in highly ranked journals in other fields including the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Review of Economics and Statistics. His publications have had a big impact, garnering over 1700 total and nearly 1600 citations since 2009 according to Google scholar, with five papers exceeding 100 citations each. In addition to the strength of his methodological work, Hainmueller has also used sophisticated methods to answer important substantive questions. For example, his 2013 paper with Hangartner, "Who Gets a Swiss Passport?" has an innovative and elegant design while making an important substantive contribution. This paper won the Durr Award, one of over a half dozen awards garnered by Hainmueller's research. He also continues to produce innovative methodological work that will have a big impact in the future, such as his recent Political Analysis paper on conjoint analysis, which won an editor's choice award. For the strength and consistency of his work, we are happy to award Jens Hainmueller the 2014 Society for Political Methodology Emerging Scholar Award.

Emerging Scholar Award