Felipe Valencia Caicedo, a PhD graduate from the Department of Economics and Business, has been selected as a winner of the Enrique Fuentes Quintana Award.

An 18-member jury for the academic year 2014-2015 selected Dr. Valencia's thesis, entitled "Three Essays in Economic Long-term Persistence", out of 78 submissions in the category of Social Sciences. The winning thesis investigates long-term economic persistence in the Americas, and found that differences in innovative capacity are important to explaining present income differences both between Latin and North America as well as within the United States.

The Enrique Fuentes Quintana Award recognises top doctoral theses from four categories, and awards these for their excellence and rigorous work. The four award categories are: the Social Sciences; the Health Sciences; the Humanities; and Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, and Architecture. Awards are endowed with a prize of €5,000 and publication of the thesis in the collection Estudios de la Fundación. Enrique Fuentes Quintana was a prominent Spanish economist in the second half of the twentieth century, who served as Spanish Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs from 1977 to 1979 and who also founded several prestigious economic journals.

The DEE PhD Programme prepares students of exceptional talent for careers with the world's leading academic institutions, research centres, and consulting and financial firms. The programme is a partner in the European Doctoral Program (EDP) in Quantitative Economics.