I almost always steer away from the personal in this space, but it feels like time to make an exception. Last weekend, at the 2026 Annual Meetings of the Allied Social Science Associations (which includes a number of associations with overlapping memberships joined by economics and finance academics), I was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.
It’s a considerable honor. The Distinguished Fellow award started in 1965, and in the 60 years since then, about 200 people have received it. For comparison, the Nobel Prize in economics started in 1969, and has been awarded to 99 people since then. There is partial but meaningful overlap in the lists of those who have won the two awards.
For me, the honor was quite unexpected. Distinguished Fellows are typically PhD economists who have been prominent in published research. But my job since 1986 has been Managing Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. (All issues of the JEP from the first one to the most recent are freely available online.) As the prize citation notes: “Steering the JEP and ensuring continuity in its unique approach and voice has been Taylor’s primary contribution to economics over his four-decade career.”
Thus, being named a Distinguished Fellow reminded me of the time a decade ago when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Yes, Bob in general deserves awards. Me, too. But this particular award was not one I ever expected would come my way. I am more pleased about it than I can easily say.
You can read the prize citation here. Here is a picture of me receiving the award from Katherine Abraham, the current president of the American Economic Association.
