Exeter finalist wins prestigious Economics award

Congratulations to David Thomas, who was recently awarded the inaugural Kaneda Award at the Tenth Annual Carroll Round Conference in Georgetown, USA.

The PPE undergraduate, who is in his final year at Exeter, won the prize for his paper, “A Robust Approach to Price Stickiness”. He faced competition from 25 of the world’s top undergraduates in the field of economics, and was awarded the prize for demonstrating ‘the highest level of excellence in both paper quality and participation’.

David based the journal-length article on his thesis, which he is carrying out under the direction of Michael Cohen Fellow and Tutor in Economics, Professor Martin Ellison. He travelled to America over the Easter Vacation for the prestigious conference, a unique economics forum for discussion and presentation of research.

In addition to his outstanding personal achievement, David was able to take part in scholarly discussion and had the privilege of seeing leading economist keynote speakers Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Dr. Jagdish Bhagwati.

He said of the experience, ‘it’s an incredibly rare opportunity to go and meet with people who care about the same things as you, and who worry about the same problems as you, but who have come from a different background to you. As our knowledge and experience combined and collided we learned a huge amount we never could have learned alone.’

David plans to enter the world of education through the Teach First scheme after graduating, but hopes that the international recognition he has achieved through the Kaneda Award will help him to secure funding for postgraduate research in the future.