The inaugural recipient is Christina Brinkmann for her dissertation, Essays on Financial and Labor Market Institutions. Christina Brinkmann completed her doctorate at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics in 2025 under the supervision of Farzad Saidi and Moritz Kuhn. She is currently Assistant Professor of Finance at the Questrom School of Business, Boston University. Brinkmann's dissertation impressed the selection committee through its exceptional scientific quality, methodological breadth, and original contribution to understanding the interaction between financial and labour market institutions. Taking a modern empirical perspective, the dissertation examines how institutional frameworks shape economic decision-making and how these effects translate into real economic outcomes.
The Cläre Tisch Dissertation Prize in Economics commemorates the economist Cläre Tisch (1907–1941), whose scholarly work and life are closely connected to the University of Bonn. Cläre Tisch came to Bonn in 1926 to study economics and completed her doctorate under Joseph A. Schumpeter. Her dissertation made a significant contribution to one of the defining economic debates of its time—the question of whether a centrally planned economy could allocate scarce resources efficiently—and attracted international attention, including from Friedrich A. von Hayek and Schumpeter himself. Despite this remarkable achievement, her promising academic career was cut short by Nazi persecution. As a Jewish scholar, she was forced from academia and was deported to Minsk, where she was murdered in 1941.
By naming the prize in her honour, the Department of Economics and the BGSE celebrate academic excellence while remembering a scholar whose contributions deserve lasting recognition and whose life reminds us of the importance of academic freedom, openness, and responsibility.
The Manchot Lecture
Going forward, the Cläre Tisch Dissertation Prize in Economics will be awarded annually in the context of the Manchot Lecture. As the inaugural recipient of the prize, Christina Brinkmann will return to Bonn for the 19th Manchot Lecture on 10 November 2026, where she will present insights from her award-winning research. This year's Manchot Lecture will be delivered by Professor Melissa Dell, Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics at Harvard University. The Manchot Lecture is open to the public and aims to make current economic research accessible to a broad audience while fostering dialogue between academia and society.