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The Czech Economic Society awarded Olga Popova (IOS Regensburg, Department of Economics) the second prize in the competition “Young Economist of the Year 2014”. This annual award is presented to the most talented young scholars for their research papers. This year the competition runs for the 21st time. The award was presented on November 29, 2014 at the conference of the Czech Economic Society held at the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic.Olga Popova received the award for the paper “Can Religion Insure against Aggregate Shocks to Happiness? The Case of Transition Countries” recently published in the Journal of Comparative Economics. In this paper, she identifies the insurance effect of religiosity and finds that individual religiosity helps to smooth the effects of economic reforms on happiness and perceptions of economic and political situations in transition countries. 