Bristol’s Annual Festival of Economics engages members of the public in economics through a series of panel discussions and talks and is organised by Professor Diane Coyle.
The economics department of Bristol University has organised a schools event as part of the festival for many years, challenging teams of students studying A level economics to solve a real-life problem –such as encouraging healthy eating in schools and tackling congestion –using standard and non-standard economic tools.
The 2018 event comprised of:
- An auction market game in which teams (“restaurants”) bid for the raw materials required to make different menus.
- A ‘meet the economist’ Q&A/networking session, where students hear from a panel of economists from finance, civil service, think tanks and journalism.
- A Festival of Economics panel discussionon “Statistics, Lies and Truth in the Post-Face world”, with panel members from multiple institutions.
- The schools challenge where students had just over an hour to consider the challenges and opportunities generated by the “rise of the robots” and the implications for government policy. Each team had to produce a single-page poster with their ideas which was judged.
