Announcements.

• Position: Human resource management of Southern Economic Association

News Note

The results of the Southern Economic Association elections were announced at the Southern Economic Association meeting in New Orleans, LA in November 2004. The new officers are:

President-Elect: Catherine C. Eckel, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Vice-President: Jonathan H. Hamilton, University of Florida (two-year term)

Board of Trustees: Christopher J. Ruhm. University of North Carolina at Greensboro (four-year term).

The Southern Economic Association Nominating Committee members for the 2006 slate of officers are:

Charles A. Holt (Chair), University of Virginia (cah2k@ virginia.edu)

Robert Feinberg, American University (feinber@ american.edu)

Paul Pecorino, University of Alabama (ppecorin@ cba.ua.edu).

Georgescu-Roegen Prize in Economics

The annual Georgescu-Roegen Prize in Economics was awarded to Paul J. Devereux of the University of California at Los Angeles on November 21, 2004, at the annual meetings of the Southern Economic Association in New Orleans, LA.

The award is given to the author or authors of the article selected by the prize committee as the best to appear in the Southern Economic Journal in the previous volume year. This year's winner is "Cyclical Quality Adjustment in the Labor Market" by Paul J. Devereux. This article appeared in the January 2004 issue, Volume 70, Number 3.

The paper by Devereux is beautifully crafted. The paper examines why job entrants exhibit wages that are more procyclical than the wages of workers not changing jobs. Devereux develops a theoretical job assignment model that explains how the qualifications of workers who are hired for particular jobs, the wage rates of these workers, and the unemployment rates of workers with different skills vary over the business cycle. The model does not rely on sticky wages. Devereux assembles panel data necessary for testing the model and applies appropriate econometric methods. The results provide strong support for a job assignment model in which employers assign more able workers to jobs during recessions. The paper is novel, has strong technical merits, is well-written, and has implications for policy and for macro/labor models in which wage cyclicality plays a key role.

Paul J. Devereux is assistant professor of economics at the University of California at Los Angeles. He received his Bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Dublin and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1997 and has been at UCLA since. Devereux is also...