Stata Status: Hats Off to Prize Winner David Roodman!

I'm delighted to congratulate my colleague David Roodman on his winning the first ever Editor's Prize of the Stata Journal for his 2009 and 2011 articles. Here is one of the more easily understood bits of the citation:

Roodman’s formal education ended in 1990 with a Bachelor’s degree in theoretical mathematics from Harvard College. After years at the Worldwatch Institute and on a Fulbright in Vietnam, he arrived at CGD in 2002 knowing little about econometrics. He discovered that a great way to learn econometrics is to code it. His contributions to the Stata community since then were motivated by a desire to replicate and scrutinize complex, influential studies in development economics, which led him to write xtabond2, cmp, and other packages; and motivated by a pedagogic bent, which led him to document the packages and their mathematics in the Stata Journal. He is the author of Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance (Roodman 2012).

David's prize is a welcome reminder that at CGD we have found a way to attract world-class scholars who bring rigor as well as passion to this century's crucial challenge: reducing poverty and inequality in the world.Here is what David himself has to say about the work that brought him this honor.