2023

Prof. Paul Elhorst, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, is awarded the 2023 edition of the Jean Paelinck award!

The Jean Paelinck committee, made up of Geoffrey Hewings (Chair), Isabelle Thomas, Janet Kohlase, Juan Cuadrado-Roura, and Kieran Donaghy, provided the following motivation:

Paul Elhorst is Professor of Spatial Econometrics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Fellow of the Spatial Econometrics Association and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Spatial Economic Analysis. During his 40 years academic career he has maintained an active research and publication schedule, a career that demonstrates his commitment to research and scholarship in regional science methods. In the 1990s his research activities focused on regional labor market analysis and then shifted increasingly to spatial econometric methods (theory and applications), with applications in a diversity of research areas such as economic growth, research productivity, regional tax competition, military spending, foreign direct investment and transport economics.
Paul is known for his innovative work on spatial panel models. He has made a host of contributions to spatial panel data models highlighted in his 2014 book Spatial Econometrics: From Cross-Sectional Data to Spatial Panels. Aside from its major themes, including static and dynamic spatial panel data models, this book bridges the gap between theoretical spatial econometricians and practitioners, contains a host of useful observations and illustrations, and provides Matlab routines with which researchers can run on their own empirical problems. The more than 2,000 Google citations this book has received clearly demonstrate the international impact of his research in enhancing the use of regional science methods to understand and interpret the spatial structure of economies.      

 2021

 2015

Professor Daniel (Dan) A. Griffith (University of Texas at Dallas) is awarded the 2021 Jean Paelinck RSAI Award! 

The selection committee, made up of Prof. Budy Resosudarmo (ASU; Chair). Prof. Michael Batty (UCL), Prof. Janet Kohlase (University of Texas at Houston), Prof. Isabelle Thomas (Universitè Catholique de Louvain), and Prof. Jouke Van Dijk (University of Groningen), provided the following motivation for the prize: 

“After examining the works as well as considering recommendations by nine distinguished RSAI fellows, the committee is delighted to award the 2021 Jean Paelinck RSAI Award to Professor Daniel (Dan) A. Griffith. The committee is convinced that since early 1970s till these days Professor Griffith consistently contributed and shaped the field of regional science and, in general, advanced spatial statistics by publishing more than 180 journal articles, approximately 70 of them are as single author, in key regional science/spatial statistics journals and 11 important books. His contributions have been recognized with awards from many academic societies and professional organizations, including being an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association”. 

Professor Manfred M. Fischer, from Vienna University of Economics and Business, received the RSAI Jean Paelinck Award 2015.

The Jean Paelinck Award recognizes and honors the truly outstanding scholarly achievement of a senior and internationally recognized regional scientist in the field of Regional Science Methods and it is awarded with the nomination of five RSAI Fellows, with the selection of the Jury and with the approval by the RSAI Council.

Manfred M. Fischer fulfills all the required criteria in an excellent way:

• From the mid-1970s on, Manfred M. Fischer has been actively publishing in regional science and economic geography. From early on his work was internationally oriented (first publication in Regional Science and Urban Economics in 1979) and focusing on methods. His early work was on regional taxonomy, later he contributed to discrete choice modeling, GIS, network analysis, and neural network based methods. Recent work shows a strong interest in spatial econometrics
• Manfred M. Fischer has maintained an active research and publication schedule over 40 years. His CV lists over 100 journal publications, 13 journal special issues, 40 monographs and edited books. Although he is close to retirement, Manfred M. Fischer is still highly active in research and publishes extensively. Although his CV may not reflect the whole year, for 2014 it lists 3 journal publications, 1 book, and 4 book chapters.
• The long list of awards, among them the RSAI Fellow (2006), the EIB-ERSA-Prize (2012), demonstrates Manfred M. Fischer’s international recognition.
• Many of the publications listed in the CV of Manfred M. Fischer are coauthored, about half of them with considerably younger scholars. Many of them have themselves entered a successful academic career. Examples are T. Scherngell, A. Varga, and J. Essletzbichler.
• Despite a strong and maintained focus on regional science in general and regional science methods in particular, Manfred M. Fischer also reached out to other areas in his work. On the one hand, he was among the first European regional scientists who collaborated with Chinese scholars. On the other hand, he also aimed to reach across to other disciplines like computational science, management, data management, etc.
• Manfred Fischer is one of the founding fathers and (co) editor in chief of the prestigious methodology publication Journal of Geographical Systems. He also serves on the board of many other journals in Regional Science and related fields.

2019

Professor James LeSage, from Department of Finance and Economics, Texas State University, received the RSAI Jean Paelinck Award 2019.

The Jean Paelinck Award recognizes and honors the truly outstanding scholarly achievement of a senior and internationally recognized regional scientist in the field of Regional Science Methods and it is awarded with the nomination of five RSAI Fellows, with the selection of the Jury and with the approval by the RSAI Council.

 2017

Professor Arthur Getis, a Professor Emeritus of Geography at San Diego State University, received the RSAI Jean Paelinck Award 2017. 

The Jean Paelinck Award recognizes and honors the truly outstanding scholarly achievement of a senior and internationally recognized regional scientist in the field of Regional Science Methods and it is awarded with the nomination of five RSAI Fellows, with the selection of the Jury and with the approval by the RSAI Council.