Title: Undergrad International Economics Conference Celebrates 15th Anniversary
The Carroll Round, an annual international economics conference at Georgetown that spotlights research and discussion among the world’s top undergraduates, celebrated its 15th anniversary next week.
The annual international economics conference at Georgetown that spotlights research and discussion among the world’s top undergraduates will celebrate its 15th anniversary next week.
This year’s Carroll Round conference, which takes place April 21-24, is the kind of academic meeting that Ph.D.s attend.
“The Carroll Round is the only undergraduate economics conference with a format that replicates that of professional academics and that has global reach,” says Mitch Kaneda, an associate dean at the School of Foreign Service. “This was uniquely possible at Georgetown because students, faculty, alumni donors,and university leaders have worked together to pursue excellence in both academic research and undergraduate learning.”
Kaneda has served as faculty advisor for the Carroll Round since 2001, when Chris Griffin (SFS ’02) suggested the conference.
A committee reads applications submitted by students from Georgetown and around the world and selects around 30 papers that get presented at the April conference.
Top Undergraduates
Thestudents hail from the world’s leading economics programs, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Harvard, Princeton University and the London School of Economics.
Selected students then present their findings at the conference in journal-length articles on the latest in international economics and summarize their projects in discussion panels moderated by economics professors and practitioners.
“We bring the world’s top economics undergraduates to campus every year to present their original research,” says Maryanne Zhao (SFS’16), who serves as chair of the conference. “Through hosting the Carroll Round, we aim to encourage dynamic dialogue amongst our participants and prominent academics and policymakers in the field.”
Defining Research Conference
The conference also includes speaker events, career panels and peer mentoring.
In the past years participants have visited the Federal Reserve to speak with members of the Reserve’s board of governors, including Ben Bernanke, Roger Ferguson and Donald Kohn. Keynote lectures from eminent scholars and practitioners in the field of economics are also a feature of the Carroll Round.
This year there will be a conversation with Nobel laureate in economics Eugene Fama, who will participate via the web; Daniel Kaufmann, current president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute; and State Department Chief Economist Rodney Ludema, an economics professor on leave from Georgetown.
“Fifteen years, hundreds of the best economics students from around the country and the world, and seven Nobel laureate speakers later, the Carroll Round defines undergraduate economics research at its highest quality,” Kaneda says. “We know how successful it is, because as least eight of the past student participants are now faculty members at colleges and universities.”