The Patrick J. Welch Award for the best paper published in the Forum for Social Economics was established by the Executive Council in 2012 and named for Patrick J. Welch, editor of the journal from 1995 to 2006.  The award recipients receive a plaque and a $500 prize.

Past recipients are:

2022  Lorraine Doetter, Benedikt Preuß, & Pasquale Frisina
2021 
Alice Nicole Sindzingre
2020
Eric Schutz
2019
Jesse Hembruff & Susanne Soederberg
2018
Panayotis Giannakouros & Lihua Chen
2017 Mario Seccareccia & Eugenia Correa
2016 Francesco Burchi & Pasquale De Muro
2015 Franklin Obeng-Odoom
2014 Irene van Stavaren, Ellen Webbink, Arjan de Haan and Roberto Foa
2013 Peter M. Spiegler and William Milberg
2012 Rojhat B. Avsar

A related award was presented from 2008 through 2011 to the authors of the best articles published in the Forum for Social Economics, when this journal was published by Springer. Recipients of the Springer prize were John Henry; Charles J. Whalen; James Ronald Stanfield and Michael C. Carroll; and Reza Fazeli and Rafat Fazeli.