YES – Young Economic Summit 2018 Goes into the Final Round

Digitalisation, child poverty, sustainability and populism – these are just some of the challenges facing our society and economy. In the past six months, the student teams have worked together with ZEW and other renowned economic research institutes in Germany to come up with creative and innovative solutions to economic issues. At the final round of the fifth YES! – Young Economic Summit on 27 and 28 September 2018, the twelve student teams will present their solutions at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg.

After the presentations and discussions with the experts from the fields of science, economics and politics, the students will get to vote for the best solutions. The winning teams will be invited to attend an official award ceremony, which will be held on 4 February 2019 at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Berlin. No less than three student groups who had the support of ZEW economists in the development of their ideas made it to the YES! finals. The team from the Fritz-Erler-Schule in Pforzheim, which was mentored by Holger Stichnoth, deputy head of ZEW’s Research Department “International Distribution and Redistribution”, aims to introduce the student network “High Five”. The low-cost platform “High Five” aims to draw attention to and promote free or low-priced offers in five areas of education, leisure activities, culture, health and family.

One of the YES! finalists, the team from the Otto Schott Gymnasium in Mainz, impressed the audience with a project related to e-government at the regional final. The solution of the student team developed with the support of the ZEW economists Sebastian Blesse and Thomas Schwab, researchers from the Research Department “Corporate Taxation and Public Finance”, involved a citizen-oriented administrative assistant to simplify and reduce the number of steps in digital administrative services. The third idea to advance to the final came from the student team from the Saarpfalz Gymnasium in Homburg mentored by Jörg Ohnemus and Steffen Viete, researchers in ZEW’s Research Department “Digital Economy”. By means of a “digital certificate”, the students prepare individuals for the labour market by encouraging them to improve their digital skills.

Now it remains to be seen: will one of the teams mentored by ZEW become the winner of the Germany-wide competition?

About YES!

The "YES! – Young Economic Summit" is the biggest school competition aimed at young people which deals with economic and social issues. It falls under the patronage of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. YES! is a joint project of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Joachim Herz Stiftung.