The UCLA Department of Economics would like to congratulate Andy Atkeson and Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn for being the co-winners of the Warren C. Scoville Distinguished Teaching Award for best undergraduate teaching in Winter 2020.

Andy Atkeson won this award while teaching ECON 173A – Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship.  This course is a full-scale immersion into the world of social entrepreneurship, introducing the basics of business planning for social enterprises. Students are assigned in teams to work with participating social enterprises in Los Angeles area to implement new revenue-generating business plan for social enterprises to which they are assigned. Teams receive support from MBA student volunteers as advisers on how to work effectively together and how to resolve issues that arise with staff of assigned social enterprise.

Mortiz Meyer-ter-Vehn won this award while teaching ECON 106I – Organization of Firms. This course discusses the role of firms in traditional economic theory and modern developments in theory of firms. Topics include relationship between employer and employee, principal-agent models and moral hazard, formal versus relational contracts, successful firms as coherent systems of mutually supporting parts, property rights and asset ownership, boundaries of firms, employment versus independent contracting, internal organization of firms, role and levels of firm hierarchy.

Warren C. Scoville was a faculty member for the UCLA Department of Economics for 28 years before his death in 1969.  This award is given quarterly in his name to the ladder faculty member who receives the highest teaching evaluation scores from his or her course.