Dr. Son received the Dudley Seers Prize from the Journal of Development Studies for his paper, "Health Price of Autocratization" (2022, with Dr. Nisha Bellinger of Boise State University). The prize is given to the best article published in the journal each year.
The paper analyzes the detrimental effect of autocratic turns of governments around the world on their public health sectors. Autocratizing political leaders are less incentivized to provide public goods (such as public health) as their political fate grows unaffected by the general public's well-being, the paper demonstrates. The paper can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2021.2017891.