A release from the Foundation for Economic Education:

The first annual Beth A. Hoffman Memorial Prize for Economic Writing has been awarded to Kevin A. Carson, the Foundation for Economic Education announced. Through the generosity of a FEE donor, the prize has been established to honor the memory of Beth A. Hoffman by recognizing the best article on economics or economic history published in The Freeman the previous year.

Carson’s article, “The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies,” appeared in the November 2010 issue of The Freeman. It was selected from a list of five nominees by an outside panel of judges who knew and worked with Beth Hoffman for many years.

The prize consists of $2,000 and a plaque. A perpetual plaque will also be displayed at FEE’s headquarters.

The upshot of Carson’s winning article is that “subsidies to transportation have probably done more than any other factor (with the possible exception of intellectual property law) to determine the present shape of the American corporate economy. Currently predominating firm sizes and market areas are the result of government subsidies to transportation.”

Beth Hoffman (1950-2008) was the long-time managing editor of The Freeman.