August 25th 2006

Mar Rubio, assistant professor of economic history at UPF and researcher with aJuan de la Cierva grant, receives from the International EconomicHistory Association (IEHA) the prize for Best Doctoral Thesis on 20thcentury Economic History produced in the last four years. The prizewas awarded on August 25th at the 14th International Conference ofEconomic History held in Helsinki.

The IEHA Conference, held every four years, offers three prizes: BestDoctoral Thesis on 20th century Economic History, Best DoctoralThesis on 19th century Economic History and Best Doctoral Thesis onMedieval and Modern Economic History. All the theses presented musthave been written in the four years previous to the congress. In thelatest edition 60 theses were presented, 20 per category. The judgesselect a short list of 4 theses per category which must then bepresented publicly by their authors at the conference. Finally, a paneldecides on the three winning theses. Rubio won the 20th centurycategory.

Mar Rubio's doctoral thesis, read at the London School of Economics in2002, is based on the study of national accounts of twopetrol-producing countries, Mexico and Venezuela, over the 20thcentury. The thesis aims to be a pioneering examination of theefficiency and utility of environmental accounting as a tool oflong-term economic analysis.

Environmental accounting demonstrates that prosperity based on theexhaustion of natural resources may well be a mirage. Traditionalnational accounts ignore the fact that natural resources stocks arediminishing. From an environmental perspective, this omission tends toexaggerate incomes, encourages unsustainable consumption andgives a false impression of the economic health of thesecountries. Furthermore, the history of petrol-producing countries isfull of references based on widely different premises, which come toconclusions similar to those recently reached with environmentalaccounting. The thesis is the result of combining these twoliteratures and taking advantage of the resulting synergies.