Announcements.

• Position: Christopher J. Ruhm, Donna K. Ginter and Barry T. Hirsch appointed at Southern Economic Association

The results of the Southern Economic Association elections were announced at the Southern Economic Association meeting in San Antonio, in November 2009. The new officers are:

President-Elect: James C. Cox, Georgia State University

Vice-President: Christopher J. Ruhm, The University of North Carolina (two-year term)

Board of Trustees: Donna K. Ginter, University of Kansas (four-year term).

The Southern Economic Association Nominating Committee members for the 2010 slate of officers are:

Barry T. Hirsch (Chair), Georgia State University (bhirsch@gsu.edu)

Jim F. Couch, University of North Alabama (jfcouch@ una.edu)

Maria Arbatskaya, Emory University (marbats@emory. edu).

Georgescu-Roegen Prize in Economics

The annual Georgescu-Roegen Prize in Economics was awarded to Russell S. Sobel, West Virginia University, and Brian J. Osoba, Central Connecticut State University, at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Economic Association.

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 "Youth Gangs as Pseudo-Governments: Implications for Violent Crime" by Russell S. Sobel and Brian J. Osoba. The article appeared in the April 2009 issue, Volume 75, Number 4.

In recent years, economic researchers have begun to address questions regarding social issues that historically have rested in the domain of other disciplines. The use of formal economic models often generates predictions at odds with conventional thinking, which highlights the value that economists bring to discussions aimed at explaining social behavior. Moreover, careful empirical examination of these hypotheses allows economists to make convincing arguments about the impact of policies to alter social actions. The article by Professor Sobel and professor Osoba is a sterling example of this emerging form of economic research.

Over past two decades newspapers across America have been dotted with journalistic accounts of flourishing gangs in U.S. cities. A positive correlation between the presence of gangs and violent crime has led journalists and social scientists in disciplines outside of economics to advance the commonly accepted wisdom that gangs cause violence. However, Sobel and Osoba "propose that the failure of government to protect the rights of individuals from violence committed by youths has led to the formation of gangs as protective agencies...