TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Dr. Harris Schlesinger, professor of finance and Frank Park Samford Chair of Insurance at The University of Alabama, has received an award from the Decision Analysis Society of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, known as INFORMS, for the best decision analysis article or book published in 2006.

The paper, “Putting Risk in Its Proper Place,” is co-authored with Louis Eeckhoudt, a professor at the Catholic University of Mons in Belgium and appeared in the American Economic Review in March 2006. The award will be presented at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. in October.

“This is the sort of recognition that has earned Dr. Schlesinger his much-deserved international reputation as one of the world’s foremost scholars and researchers,” said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration.

Both authors have been invited to attend the meeting to discuss the paper, which examines preferences towards particular classes of lottery pairs.

“Risk aversion has long played a role in analyzing decisions under risk,” said Schlesinger, “but higher order concepts also play an important part in the analysis. However, except for technical properties, these concepts have been little understood. We show how these higher order properties can be characterized by preference relations over certain types of simple lotteries.

Schlesinger and Eeckhoudt have collaborated on a number of papers and books on risk and its impact on modern economics. Their book, “Economic and Financial Decisions under Risk,” joint with Professor Christian Gollier of the University of Toulouse and published by the Princeton University Press, had recently won the 2007 Kulp-Wright Book Award.

Schlesinger has been at The University of Alabama since 1987. He is on sabbatical leave as a visiting professor of mathematical finance and economics at the University of Munich in Germany.

The University of Alabama, a student-centered research university, is in the midst of planned, steady enrollment growth with a goal of reaching 28,000 students by 2010. This growth, which is positively impacting the campus and the state's economy, is in keeping with UA's vision to be the university of choice for the best and brightest students. UA, the state's flagship university, is an academic community united in its commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all Alabamians.