YES! – Young Economic Summit: Next Year’s Competition Kicks Off

How can we encourage businesses to implement digitalisation measures? What does a fair and efficient tax system look like? Why are high school students also affected by employment benefits such as Hartz IV? Is there still hope for the European emissions trading system? How can we most effectively integrate highly skilled migrants into the labour market? These are some of the questions that the student teams from the Southwest region will have to tackle over the course of the high school economics competition YES! – Young Economic Summit in 2018. During the competition, researchers of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) will once again be assisting the students by providing scientific expertise.

Supporting new generations of economists is one of ZEW’s major concerns. Having mentored 2017’s winning team from BBS Wirtschaft 1 Ludwigshafen, who were presented the 2017 YES! Award by the Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries at an award ceremony in Berlin earlier this month, researchers at the Mannheim-based institute were eager to support a new batch of would-be economists tackling a new set of economic issues. ZEW is a scientific partner of the YES! – Young Economic Summit, a project set up by the Joachim Herz Stiftung and the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

“YES! is a great project. Economics is not supposed to be studied in the seclusion of an ivory tower. At ZEW, we aim to make our research findings accessible to the public, and, in particular, to share our findings and experiences with high school students. Sparking the students’ interest in economics and supporting them in their goals is an important concern for us. And if our collaboration results in innovative solutions eventually being seized upon by policy-makers, even better,” says Professor Achim Wambach, president of ZEW.

About YES!

The YES! – Young Economic Summit falls under the patronage of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The YES! programme, a joint project by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Joachim Herz Stiftung, is one of the biggest German school competitions aimed at getting young people to engage with global economic and social issues. Over the course of a six-month mentoring programme, the student teams will be tackling pressing issues facing future generations. Researchers from various Leibniz institutions will be supporting the students by providing scientific expertise. The regional qualification round for teams from the Southwest region will take place on 15 June 2018 at ZEW in Mannheim. At the YES! final in Hamburg teams from the different regions will then compete against each other.

These are the topics provided by ZEW for the teams from the Southwest region:

• Modern Tax Policy – Fair and Efficient Carina Neisser
• Germany in the Digital Age – Public Administration of the FutureSebastian Blesse & Thomas Schwab
• Promoting Digitalisation in BusinessesJörg Ohnemus & Steffen Viete
• Using the Media in the Digital World Daniel Erdsiek & Thomas Niebel
• Hartz IV and the Educational Package Holger Stichnoth
• Designing Efficient Allocation Procedures for Nursery School Places Nicolas Fugger
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Highly Skilled Migrants Bastian Krieger, Maikel Pellens, Florence Blandinieres & Markus Trunschke
• The European CO2 MarketClaire Gavard