Jai Hind College and St. Xavier’s, Jaipur tie for top honours at the Young Economists’ Research Competition (YERC)

Mumbai: Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics (MDAE), India’s top institute for post-graduate Economics, is pleased to announce that Sarwari Das from Jai Hind College and Nidhi Tarparia from St. Xavier’s, Jaipur have tied for first place at the Young Economists’ Research Competition. Following the presentations made by the finalist teams – from Sophia’s College, Mumbai University; St. Xavier’s, Jaipur, Sarla Anil Modi School of Economics, NMIMS; and Jai Hind College. The competition began with registered participants receiving guidance in writing research papers from Indradeep Ghosh, MDAE’s Dead of Academic Affairs, after which they submitted a research paper. Based on the paper, finalists were selected to make presentations to the judges and audience, and
5 selected finalists made presentations on the provided topics, and Sarwari held the audience and judges spellbound with her data-driven proposal to support frugal innovation while speaking on the topic “How can India become a nation of innovators?”. She split top honours with Nidhi, who used interesting correlations to support her argument while speaking on the topic “Does good economics require bad politics?”. Given the tie for first, the third position was bagged by Meet Mehta and Maneka Prabhu of NMIMS, who presented on the topic “GST – What was the objective? Is it being achieved?”. The competition was judged by Arijeet Bannerjee (MD, Deutsche Bank) and MDAE’s own Professor Shagata Mukherjee.
Commenting on the competition, Professor Indradeep Ghosh, Dean of Academic Affairs, MDAE, said, “We are extremely pleased with the competition, which is part of our endeavour to promote critically important skills in economics among young Indians. We didn’t want this to be just another competition, and therefore MDAE first provided guidance to the participants to engender better research skills right at the beginning. This approach reflects the Academy’s belief and reliance on mentorship as a methodology for imparting education. As a result, we were privileged to witness the incredible work and outstanding analysis put in by the finalists, and we look forward to repeating this exercise every year.”
In addition to the initial training session, finalist teams were also mentored by Professor Indradeep Ghosh on their papers and presentations to help them prepare for the finals. In this manner, a wide pool of participants were given the skills they need to become more adept at research, especially the data-driven and analytical methodologies that are being adopted in academia and industry today. This level of engagement and mentoring in competitions is unique to MDAE and YERC, and the institute intends to continue using this unique approach in the years to come.