Edward P. Lazear Prize 2026 Recipient

Eric A. Hanushek

Committee: Robert Moffitt (Chair), Julia Lane, Betsey Stevenson, Kenneth Troske

Eric Hanushek is the recipient of the 2026 Lazear Prize for excellence in research, exemplary service to the field, and contributions to civil society.

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he has been employed since 2001. Prior to joining Hoover, Hanushek served on the faculties of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Yale University, and the University of Rochester, where he was a Professor of Economics and Political Science. He obtained his undergraduate degree at the Air Force Academy and his doctorate at MIT. He is an elected Fellow of SOLE, the American Educational Research Association, and the International Academy of Education, as well as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Fordham Prize for Excellence in Education and the Yudan Prize for Education Research, the field of education’s most prestigious international prize.

Eric’s research has focused on K-12 education in both the U.S. and internationally, where he has made widespread, fundamental, and influential contributions that have shaped the field of the economics of education. His work on the value-added model of teacher effectiveness is now the standard model used in the literature, and his early work on the educational production function, exploring the role of expenditures and capital inputs as well as teachers has provided bedrock foundations for the enormous literature that followed. His work on class size and the economic return to educational quality has likewise been fundamental. More broadly, his influential conceptualization of school accountability has become the norm in both academic and policy circles in education, including at the local level. In other work, he has shown that school finance litigation and reform can improve educational outcomes. In international research, he has shown through cross-country comparisons that cognitive ability rather than years of schooling is important in explaining economic cross-country differences in growth. He has also conducted research on education in low- and middle-income countries. Eric has published over 300 articles and has written or edited 26 books.

Eric’s service to the profession includes a term as Co-Editor of the Journal of Human Resources, Co-Editor of CESifo Economic Studies, Associate Editor of five other journals, and service on the editorial boards of 14 other journals. He served on the Policy Council of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management from 1981 to 1985, followed by a term as its Vice President and a term as its President. He helped form and then served as Chairman of the Executive Board of the Texas Schools Project, which has provided unique and valuable data to many economists working on education issues. He has served on a dozen additional councils and advisory boards of research organizations for economists and education researchers.

In the area of public service, Eric has served as a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisors and on advisory committee for, and deputy director of, the Congressional Budget Office and the Department of Education, as well as serving on the Board of Directors of the National Board for Education Sciences. In addition to serving on a number of advisory boards to other federal and state agencies, he has testified before Congress and state legislatures on numerous occasions, lending his expertise to education policy and giving his views on legislation under consideration by those bodies. He has served on four different National Academy of Sciences committees, chairing two of the committees, as well as serving on its Committee on National Statistics. He organized and led the CESinfo group for many years, aiming to integrate promising young scholars from North America and Europe in the area of education research. He founded the Global Analytics Education Institute, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help developing nations improve their education systems through systematic evaluation, research, and training, as well as aiming to support the development of better decision-making by educational policymakers. Using the funds he received from the Yudan Prize, he founded and organized the Africa Fellows in Education program, a capacity-building program focused on improving education policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.