Economics

This year saw much to be proud of in the economics department, with a number of outstanding pupil achievements some of which are detailed below.

Harvard International Economics Essay Contest

Three L8 pupils were finalists (top 10 internationally): Jad Abuzayyad, Arth Kochhar, and Frederick Dehmel, and their essays were judged by Professor Oliver Hart, 2016 Nobel Laureate. Kangzi Chan in the U8, was also highly commended for the second year running! Very well done to Frederick Dehmel, who was one of three overall winners, who wrote on ‘Revisiting antitrust: a modern perspective’. He opens by saying:

“Monopoly; a frolic, light-hearted board game for up to 8 players. Yet 7 of these players quickly find their enjoyment dissipating once one player inevitably becomes too strong.” ❚

Harvard Pre-Collegiate Economics Challenge

SPS entered two teams into the HUEA for the first time this year. The competition tests knowledge of the US AP Economics course as well as its application to wider topics. Our Lower Eighth team of Dennis Jian, Arth Kochhar, Wentao Huang and Seyane Sivarakulan came top world wide in the first round and reached the quarter finals. They were also the highest placed UK school. ❚

Cambridge Marshall Society

Kangzi Chan, in the Upper Eighth, won Cambridge’s Marshall Society prize over the summer with his essay on ‘Has the Euro experiment failed?’ He writes:

A test-tube baby, named Euro, was officially born on 1st January 1999… within the newly built ‘Eurozone’ hospital…Euro is now a 22-year-old man. He is still recovering from the trauma from the GFC, European Crises and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. However, what does not kill him, only makes him stronger… ❚

Minds Underground™ Essay Competition 2022

1400 students from across the globe including students from South Korea, Nigeria, Russia, Pakistan, and the USA entered this competition and Arth Kochhar, in the Lower Eighth, was runner-up. ❚

HM Prize – Economics category winner

James Trotman, also commended in last summer’s Financial Times/Royal Economics Society Young Economist of the Year, combined two models (Cournot and kin-targeted altruism) to consider the extent to which cooperation may occur in the tech industry. ❚

Stock Soc

StockSoc, started last year by Kayyan Elmasry and Malachi Cohen, has been taken over by Howell Zhang and Andrey Orlov in the Lower Eighth. The highlight of the year was an interview with Nicholas Meer, a Managing Director at JPM, and Robert Perkins, Managing Director at ING. ❚

Economics Trading Day within West London Partnership

Mixed teams of six from our partner schools came together in an interactive trading game run by Deutsche Bank

Lower Eighth Economics Research – internal essay competitions

The Lower Eighth were set two research tasks in their first year studying economics. Over Christmas, they were asked to examine why free markets fail to address climate change and so expected to research the idea of market failure for the first time independently. One excellent essay was written by Dennis Jian. He finishes by writing:

In conclusion, it is clear the environmental toll on our planet is enormous. Government intervention accompanied by existing marketbased solutions have proven to cut emissions within the past decade. However, without decisive reforms and global cooperation, the world cannot become a cleaner place.

A second task was set over the Spring holidays and pupils had to research whether policy makers had learnt from previous recessions. Most looked at responses to the Global Financial Crisis compared to COVID. Two excellent essays were written by Wentao Huang and Christian Bulmer, with different conclusions.

Wentao writes: Hindsight suggests that we have much to learn from previous recessions, particularly with respect to public finances and inflation. Fixating on these blemishes, however, obscures the extent to which the response to COVID-19 has been a triumph of economic policy.

Christian concludes: A recurring theme of 2008-2020 is that policy keeps becoming more expansionary…While policymakers might have dealt well with COVID as an isolated crisis, in the long term, continuing to expand policy risks undermining reserve currencies and future policies to deal with recessions, if they move closer towards fiscal dominance. ❚

Young Enterprise

The school had three Lower Eighth teams competing in the Company of the Year programme this year. Team Nutree, led by Charles Calzia, came runners-up in the Richmond and Kingston stage of the competition, whilst Ceintury, led by Sabeer Sawhney, were awarded first place. Both teams went on to compete in the South London Final. Nutree had further entrepreneurship success in the Euronext Blue Challenge in which they won the UK final. ❚