Each year the Royal Economic Society asks Year 12 and 13 A-Level students to submit an essay for The Young Economist of the Year Essay Competition. Students were asked to write an essay of up to 1,500 words on one of five given topics, ranging from data privacy to climate change. This year we received an excellent response, with over 1,500 submissions from schools around the world. The competition has five prizes, with one awarded for the best overall essay and a further five for the best essays within each category.
The Royal Economic Society is pleased to announce that the overall winner of this year’s competition is Marco Minasi-Smith of Fortismere School. Marco will receive a cash prize as well as have his essay published in the Financial Times, which will be available to read on our website and the FT’s in the coming weeks. Alongside Marco we are pleased to name the five winners with the best essays within each topic:
- Matthew Wright of Brighton College (“A Mansion Tax is an idea whose time has come.” Discuss.)
- Ayushman Mukherjee of Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet ("The gig economy is a great opportunity to increase women’s participation in the labour market by allowing more flexibility." Discuss.)
- Niki Rostambeihi of Cardiff High School (From an economic point of view, are rules limiting the transfer of data to other countries on privacy or security grounds any different from protectionism in the trade of goods?)
- Arda Battalgazi of Westminster School (Given the concentration of high-value economic sectors in big cities is a promise to significantly reduce regional inequalities by ‘levelling up’ possible to fulfil?)
- Jessica Fraser of St Olave's Grammar School (Will targets to bring greenhouse gas emissions in the UK to net zero by 2050 be a drag on economic growth?)
The following were shortlisted by our judging panel:
Jennifer Shirly
Yap Ziyi
Simon Davchev
Freja Richdale
Dev Patel
Niki Rostambeihi
Xindan Zhang
Charles Cartisser
Joshua Rajendran
Simon Brooks
We would like congratulate all of this year’s winners and thank everybody who participated.
