The Dorian Fisher Memorial Prize
We are delighted to announce the 2021 competition for A- Level and IB students, with a 1st prize of £500 and £250 each for three runners up. There is also a prize of £500 for the school with the highest number of entrants. The top 20 entries will all be invited to a special one-day event at the IEA in the Autumn term.
The competition is open to students studying International Baccalaureate or A Level. Entries should be submitted by email to [email protected]. The email should clearly state your name and school. The final deadline for this year’s competition is Friday 30th July at 23:59:59 2021.
This competition is named after Dorian Fisher, the wife of IEA founder Sir Antony Fisher, who was a long-time supporter of the Institute and its work.
Entries to the competition should contain the following three pieces of work:
- A short essay, of roughly 1,200 words, on one of the following questions:
(a) What challenges do systemic risks pose for economic thinking and analysis?
(b) Are economic principles true and applicable in all times and places, or are they historically and contextually specific?
(c) What does the term ‘innovation’ mean in economics and why is the phenomenon of innovation so important for economists?
- A 500-word answer to one of the following three questions:
(a) What are rational expectations and why do they matter?
(b) What are the differences between classical and neo-classical economics?
(c) What are risk and uncertainty in economics and how are they different?
- A 500-word answer to the following question.
Identify an area of economics that you think should be given more attention in the A-Level or IB syllabus and say why this is so.
FAQS
Are international students allowed to apply?
Yes! You cannot have been in tertiary education (university or equivalent).
Do I have to study A-level Economics to apply?
No, you do not have to study A-level Economics, but you must be in Sixth Form or equivalent (last two years of high school).
How do I submit my entry?
Entries should be submitted by email to [email protected]. Please submit all three questions on ONE word document or PDF.
What style of referencing should I use?
Harvard style referencing is preferred. A guide for doing this can be found here.
Should I include a bibliography? Does the bibliography count towards the word count?
A bibliography is recommended to state your sources. The bibliography does not count towards the word count, but the embedded references do.
Can I include graphs and diagrams?
Yes, graphs and diagrams are allowed, but not compulsory.
How stringent is the word count?
Please stick to the word count provided. We will not stop reading past the word count given, but do not go over by more than 5%.
Suggested Further Reading for Question 1
(a) What challenges do systemic risks pose for economic thinking and analysis?
n.b. notice that the question asks about the challenges to economic thinking, not economic stability or growth.
Pawel Smaga, (2014) The Concept of Systemic Risk. SRC Special paper 5. LSE
J W Welburn et al (2020a) Systemic Risk in the Broad Economy: Interfirm Networks and Shocks in the US Economy. Rand Corporation.
J W Welburn et al (2020b) Systemic Risk: It’s Not Just in the Financial Sector. Rand Corporation.
ECB Financial Stability Review 2009 ‘The Concept of Systemic Risk’
(b) Are economic principles true and applicable in all times and places, or are they historically and contextually specific?
You should do a general search for accounts of the late 19th century ‘Methodenstreit’ when this issue was first raised. Wikipedia has an entry on this and also an informative entry on the ‘Historical School’ and its contemporary admirers such as Ha-Joon Chang and Erik Reinert. A recent work that sets out why this is a continuing issue and involves fundamental questions about the nature of economics (and other social sciences) is Samuel Bostaph (1996) ‘The Methodenstreit’ Chapter 66 in Peter Boetke (ed) The Edward Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics.
Hodgson, Geoffrey M. (2001). How economics forgot history. The problem of historical specificity in social science. London – New York: Routledge
Kadish, Alon (2012). Historians, Economists, and Economic History pp. 3–35
Reinert, Erik (2007). How Rich Countries Got Rich … and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers
Shionoya, Yuichi (2001), ed. The German Historical School: The Historical and Ethical Approach to Economics. (Routledge)
For the other side see Ludwig von Mises Epistemological Problems of Economics
and this introduction by Peter Boetke with further links.
(c) What does the term ‘innovation’ mean in economics and why is the phenomenon of innovation so important for economists?
Start here; here ; and here.
David Warsh (2006) Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations
You should also look at Google Scholar for the many books and articles on this subject.
Matt Ridley (2020) How Innovation Works: and Why it Flourishes in Freedom. Harper.
The 2020 Dorian Fisher Memorial Prize Results
The IEA is delighted to announce the results of the 2020 Dorian Fisher Memorial Prize, where we had a record-breaking number of schools enter. The first prize of £500 went to Harry Houillon of Sevenoaks School, while the three runner-up prizes of £250 each went to Ananyashree Goenka (Dhirubhai Ambani International School Mumbai), Ayushman Mukherjee (Queen Elizabeth’s School, Barnet), and Ziyan Xie (Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy). Among those who just missed out on one of the top prizes were Zsophia Balogh (Revai Miklos High School, Hungary), Neha Shah (Tiffin Girls School), Pramika Vaseekaran (Wallington High School for Girls) and Zarin Rana (Harrow School). The prize of £500 for the school with the highest number of entries went to Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe for the third year in a row, with Queen Elizabeth, Barnet a close runner up.
The Monetary Policy Essay Prize
The 2021 prize was launched on 3rd August with the question “Will the pandemic be inflationary or disinflationary?”
On 17 March we ran the final for the third year of our Monetary Policy Essay Prize in conjunction with the Institute of Ineternational of Monetary Research and the Vinson Centre. The entries were judged on their presentation style, command of the theory, the relevance to the question, as well as overall persuasiveness.
The Undergraduate portion of the competition was won by Gustaf Dillner of Warwick University, who won a prize of £500. Max Marian from the London School of Economics came in second, and Mihir Gupta from UCL came in third.
Michele Silvestri from King’s College School, Wimbledon won the Sixth Form portion of the competition, followed by Max Sanders of Brighton, Hove & Sussex Sixth form coming in second, and Mayo Adetujoye from Withington Girls’ School in third.