The Business and Economics Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association announces the competition for the 2000 Zellner Thesis Award. The award is named for Arnold Zellner, past Chair of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, past President of the American Statistical Association, and founding editor of the Journal of Business and Economics Statistics. The award is for the best Ph.D. thesis dealing with an applied problem in Business and Economic Statistics. It is intended to recognize outstanding work by promising young researchers in the field. The winner of the award, which consists of a $1,000 cash prize, is announced at the Annual ASA Meeting in August. A portion of the winning thesis is eligible for publication in the JBES.

The range of topics is quite broad and includes, among others, applied problems in forecasting, seasonal adjustment, data quality, empirical finance, policy evaluation, and empirical economics. Theses in the areas of computation, simulation and graphics are eligible as long as the research is of direct interest to applied workers.

The sponsor is the Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association under the auspices of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. The 1999 Section Chair is Eric Ghysels of the Pennsylvania State University; the 2000 Section Chair is Peter Schmidt of Michigan State University. The current editor of JBES is Jeffrey M. Wooldridge of Michigan State University; the out-going editors are Ruey Tsay of the University of Chicago and Mark Watson of Princeton University.

Review standards place substantial weight on research with significant results, high quality methodological work, substantial empirical content, and good exposition.

The research should be of immediate and practical value for applications in business and economic statistics.

Theses completed in the preceding two years, January 1998 to December 1999.

The editor(s) of JBES convene the Awards Committee in consultation with the current Section Chair and the Chair-Elect to form the Awards Committee from the Section Membership and Editorial Board of the JBES.

Any individual may nominate a thesis. All members of the general business statistics and econometrics community are encouraged to submit theses. Submit two unbound copies to either

Jeffrey M. Wooldridge Peter Schmidt

Editor, JBES 2000 Chair, B&E Section

Department of Economics Department of Economics

Michigan State University Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824-1038 East Lansing, MI 48824-1038

Co-Winners: Qiang Dai, for the Stanford University thesis "Specification Analysis of Affine Term Structure Models," and Keisuke Hirano, for the Harvard University thesis "Essays on the Econometric Analysis of Panel Data."

Winner: Patrick L. Bajari, for the University of Minnesota thesis "The First Price Sealed Bid Auction with Asymmetric Bidders: Theory with Applications."

Honorable Mention: Tong Li, for the University of Southern California thesis Affiliated Private Values in OCS Wildcat Auctions," and Ahmet K. Tahmiscioglu, for the University of Southern California, thesis "A Bayesian Analysis of Pooling Cross-Section and Time Series Data: An Investigation of Company Investment Behavior."

Winner: Jeffrey Currie, for the University of Chicago thesis "The Geographic Extent of the Market: Theory and Application to U.S. Petroleum Markets."

Honorable Mention: Jason Abrevaya, for the MIT thesis "Semiparametric Estimation Methods for Nonlinear Panel Data Models and Mismeasured Dependent Variables," and Stephen Gray, for the Stanford thesis "Essays in Financial Economics."

Winner: Ekaterina Kyriazidou, for the Northwestern University thesis "Essays in Estimation and Testing of Econometric Models."

Honorable Mention: Graham Elliot, for the Harvard University thesis "Application of Local to Unity Asymptotic Theory to Time Series Regression."

Winner: Marjorie Rosenberg, for the University of Michigan thesis "A Hierarchical Bayesian Model of the Rate of Non-Acceptable In-patient Hospital Utilization."

Honorable Mention: Phillip Braun, for the University of Chicago thesis "Asset Pricing and Capital Investment."

Winner: Geert Bekaert, for the Northwestern University thesis "Empirical Analysis of Foreign Exchange Markets: General Equilibrium Perspectives

Honorable Mention: Yacine Ait-Sahalia, for the MIT thesis "Nonparametric Functional Estimation with Applications to Financial Models."