Book on stock and station agent industry wins inaugural economic history prize

Nov 12, 2003

A University of Wollongong academic has won the inaugural Bruce McComish Prize for Economic History for his book titled: The Rural Entrepreneurs. A History of the Stock and Station Agent Industry in Australia and New Zealand.

The $4,000 prize, won by the Head of the School of Economics and Information Systems, Professor Simon Ville (pictured), is expected to be awarded in Melbourne in mid December. It is in recognition of the most original recent research in the field of economic history undertaken within Australia or New Zealand.

According to a website set up to promote the prize, it is reported that the prize is the first initiative of the Bruce McComish Fund for Economic History created in the Trinity College Foundation in 2002 by Mr Bruce Sinclair McComish, businessman and author of Antilogic: Why Businesses Fail While Individuals Succeed (John Wiley & Sons, London, 2001).

The purpose of the fund is to encourage rigorous research in economic history in ways which question conventional wisdom and seek new empirical evidence and interpretations. The fund aims to encourage the use of analytical and quantitative techniques to establish 'what really happened and why', and to investigate where no evidence has previously been assembled or to challenge or overturn the unproven contentions of conventional wisdom.

Research related to business, finance, national economies or the international economy were considered for the prize.