Alice Amsden Best Book Award


The SASE Alice Amsden Best Book Award committee considers books submitted by a SASE member with a first edition publication date from one to two years prior to the next annual conference date, and which are not edited volumes, with the aim of selecting an outstanding scholarly book that breaks new ground in the study of economic behavior and/or its policy implications with regard to societal, institutional, historical, philosophical, psychological, and ethical factors. The prize comes with an award of $2,000.

Only current SASE members are invited to nominate a book for the prize, and authors are welcome to nominate their own work. Nomination periods open at the beginning of winter and close at the end of winter each year. Nominations must be accompanied by a brief nomination letter that states how the book contributes to SASE’s intellectual mission. All books/submissions must be in English. Please note that achieving diversity and inclusion is a priority for SASE.

 

Applications for the 2024 SASE Alice Amsden Best Book Award are now closed. We will open nominations for the 2025 award in the fall of 2024.


 

SASE Alice Amsden Best Book Award recipients

   
   
2024

Winner: Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets by Kimberly Kay Hoang

Honorable Mentions: 

Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India by Smitha Radhakrishnan

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines by Victor Roy

2023

Winner: Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street by Megan Tobias Neely

Honorable Mentions:
Recoding Power: Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers by Sidney A. Rothstein

2022

Winner: China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption by Yuen Yuen Ang

Honorable Mentions:
Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States by Rebecca Elliott
Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

2021

Winner: Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas by Amy Offner

Honorable Mention: Neoliberal Resilience: Lessons in Democracy and Development from Latin America and Eastern Europe by Aldo Madariaga

2020

Winner: American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation by Sarah
Quinn

Honorable Mention: In the Red: The Politics of Public Debt Accumulation in Developed Countries by Zsófia Barta

2019

Winner: The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment
in Africa
, by Ching Kwan Lee


 

About Alice Amsden

A prolific scholar, Alice Amsden wrote extensively about the process of industrialization in emerging economies, particularly in Asia. Her work frequently emphasized the importance of the state as a creator of economic growth, and challenged the idea that globalization had produced generally uniform conditions in which emerging economies could find a one-size-fits-all path to prosperity. Amsden wrote or co-authored seven books, and dozens of journal articles, essays and chapters in edited volumes. She also wrote frequently for general-interest publications; her work appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Dissent, Boston Review, Technology Review and others.

 

Alice Amsden bibliography

MIT obituary: Alice Amsden