Kirk Doran, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, has won the 2024 Adam Smith Panmure House Prize.

Established in 2021, the prize is named after the forefather of economics and celebrates those who embody his empiricism and long-term interdisciplinary thinking in their research. One of the United Kingdom's largest academic prizes open to researchers globally, it has been awarded to emerging academic leaders across multiple disciplines, including a business academic, a neurologist, and an anthropologist.

“I feel honored and privileged to win the Panmure House Prize. Adam Smith has been an inspiration to me since the first time I began studying social structures and the economy as an undergraduate,” Doran said. “I am particularly inspired by the prize's aim to explore the relationship between long-term thinking and radical innovation. This is exactly what our current incentive structures both within and outside academia under-incentivize, and that is why Panmure House's work is so essential here.”

Like Smith, Doran asks fundamental questions that are often hard to find a definitive answer to because they are so overarching. In his research, Doran seeks to identify where and how new knowledge is created in order to ultimately find the cause of long-term per capita economic growth.

Through his subfield of innovation economics, Doran aims to use techniques developed by modern labor economists to answer questions that had been long debated without progress until these techniques were developed. He has applied empirical tactics to measure knowledge generation through bibliometric analysis of interdisciplinary databases — such as papers, patents, and medical trials.

His studies find that the development of new knowledge is ultimately based on collaborative relationships in which people inspire and challenge one another.

“We are delighted to see Kirk Doran's research receive this international recognition,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost.“The Panmure House Prize's emphasis on long-term, interdisciplinary thinking mirrors the University of Notre Dame's commitment to scholarly innovation and excellence across the disciplines.”

Doran was one of four finalists from leading global institutions to be considered for the Panmure House Prize. He was supported in pursuing the award by the Office of the Provost and the College of Arts & Letters' Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.

With this recognition, Doran plans to continue examining how new knowledge impacts per capita economic growth with a multidisciplinary team. He hopes it will have a policy impact that can benefit productivity.

“I think my research will help to refocus our policy efforts regarding long-term economic growth to the encouragement of deep collaboration among innovative people,” he said. “It is not enough to better educate our workforce or even produce more entrepreneurs, scientists, and inventors; such efforts could not possibly produce long-run economic growth unless these individuals enter periods of deep collaboration with each other in the joint production of knowledge.”

Originally published by Mary Kinney at al.nd.edu on October 07, 2024.