SASE Alice Amsden Book Award (Socio-Economics)

The Alice Amsden Book Award is given annually for the best book that breaks new ground in the study of economic behavior and/or its policy implications with regard to societal, institutional, historical, philosophical, psychological, and ethical factors. Awarded by Society for Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE). 

The book investigates the paradox of how China has been able to grow so fast for so long despite the prevalence of widespread corruption. Yuen Yuen Ang challenges the idea of Chinese exceptionalism regarding corruption by offering an insightful historical comparison between contemporary China and the nineteenth century United States during the Gilded Age. She develops an innovative methodology to capture the multidimensional nature of corruption, which extends the contribution of her research well beyond China, helping to disentangle the relationship between corruption and development more broadly. 

She does not only break down different types of corruption in a conceptually nuanced manner but gathers data from an impressively broad range of sources – including opinion surveys, historical documents, interviews, macro-economic statistics – to provide robust evidence for the impact of various forms of corruption on development. The tight organization of a complex argument, the confident treatment of vast amounts of data, and the lucid writing make the book an informative and engaging read. Yuen Yuen Ang’s eclectic intellectual and methodological approach also ensures the book’s appeal to a broad interdisciplinary audience.