M-RCBG, HKS announce Dunlop awards

The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has announced that Vivek Viswanathan and Anna Katherine Barnett-Hart are the 2009 recipients of The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize in Business and Government, awarded to the graduating senior who writes the best thesis on a challenging public policy issue at the interface of business and government. The prize carries a $500 award. Due to the extraordinary caliber of submissions, the Dunlop Prize committee presented the award to both Viswanathan and Barnett-Hart this year.

Viswanathan won for his thesis, “Crafting the Law of the Sea: Elliott Richardson and the Search for Order on the Oceans, 1977-1980,” and Barnett-Hart’s thesis was titled “The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown: An Empirical Analysis.”

“Recent events have illuminated the crucial nature of the business-government relationship. From macroeconomic policy to health care, from the regulation of financial instruments to energy policy, from technological innovation to protecting private pensions, business and government influence one another around the world,” said Roger Porter, the IBM Professor of Business and Government at HKS. “The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize, named in honor of a giant in this field, allows us to encourage and recognize a new generation of young thinkers as they explore ways of understanding and improving this vital relationship.”