The Association for Comparative Economic Studies awards prizes every year for the best papers in each of its two journals.  Top papers are those ranked the highest by members of the ACES Executive Committee and leadership each year, and in the case of a tie in ranking more than one paper may be awarded.

The Bergson Prize is named after Abram Bergson, a pioneer of comparative economics, and is awarded bi-annually to the paper judged by ACES to be the best published in Comparative Economic Studies in the preceding two years.   

The Montias Prize is named after J. Michael Montias and is given to the best paper published in the Journal of Comparative Economics over the past two years.  The Montias Prize was established in 2004.  

Bergson Prize

2023 - J. David Brown, Emin Dinlersoz & John S. Earle: "Productivity Dispersion, Misallocation, and Reallocation Frictions: Theory and Evidence from Policy Reforms"

2021 - Ani Harutyunyan: "National Identity and Public Goods Provision"

2019 - Dubravko Mihaljek: "Convergence in Central and Eastern Europe: Can All Get to EU Average?"  

2017 - Jun Zhang, Tian Zhu: "Reestimating China’s Underestimated Consumption"

2015 - Rajeev Goel, Jelena Budak, Edo Rajh: “Bureaucratic Monopoly and the Nature and Timing of Bribes: Evidence from Croatian Data”

2013 - John Earle, Scott Gehlbach: “Did Post-Communist Privatization Increase Mortality?"

2011 - Yelena Kalyuzhnova, Ali Kutan, Taner Yigit, "Corruption and Economic Development in Energy-Rich Economies” 

Montias Prize

2022 - Jacopo Ponticelli, Hans-Joachim Voth: "Austerity and anarchy: Budget cuts and social unrest in Europe, 1919–2008"

2020 - David le Bris: "Testing Legal Origins Theory with France: Customary Laws versus Roman Code”; Dieter von Fintel, Johan Fourie: "The Great Divergence in South Africa: Population and Wealth Dynamics over Two Centuries” 

2018 -  Peter Murrell: "Design and Evolution in Institutional Development: The Insignificance of English Bill of Rights"; Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini : "The clan and the corporation: Sustaining cooperation in China and Europe" 

2016 - Irena Grosfeld,  Ekaterina Zhuravskaya: "Cultural vs. Economic Legacies of Empires: Evidence from the Partition of Poland"

2014 - M. Fabricio Perez, Josef C. Brada, Zdenek Drabek "Illicit Money Flows as Motives for FDI"

2012 - Avner Greif and Steven Tadelis: "A Theory of Moral Persistence: Crypto-morality and Political Legitimacy"; Pauline Grosjean: "The Institutional Legacy of the Ottoman Empire: Islamic Rule and Financial Development in South Eastern Europe"

2010 - Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Yegor Grygorenko: "Are oligarchs productive? Theory and evidence"

2008 - Amir Licht: "Culture rules: The foundations of the rule of law and other norms of governance"

2006 - Frederic Pryor: "Market economic systems"

2004 - Paul Gregory, Valery Lazarev: "Commissars and Cars: A Case Study in the Political Economy of  Dictatorship"