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SU team reaches finals of international econometric competition
Author: Ronél Beukes
Published: 24/05/2019

A student team from the Department of Economics at Stellenbosch University recently participated in the 2019 Econometric Game hosted by the University of Amsterdam. The Maties made it to the top ten finalists, thereby beating 20 opponents including Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Thirty universities participate annually in the Econometric Game at the University of Amsterdam. The event has become so popular that it is sometimes called the World Championship of Econometrics. Each participating university sends a delegation of four students who are presented with a technically challenging case study to solve in a limited time period.

This year, Martin Mwale, Petro van Eck, Roan Minnie and Willem Wilken (pictured left to right on the photograph) represented Stellenbosch University, the only African university at the event. They were supported by Economics lecturer Mr Gideon du Rand.

After two days, the SU team was one of the top ten who were allowed to continue to day three. On the third day the finalists had to solve a second case, whereafter the winner was announced.

While teams prepare intensively beforehand, the case study they have to solve always comes as a surprise. Teams are faced with technically demanding problems and tight deadlines before submitting their results in a written report.

The theme of this year's Games was Climate Econometrics. In the first round, teams had to employ the global carbon budget and data from the Global Carbon Project to forecast the growth of global atmospheric carbon concentration until the year 2100.

For the finals, 10 teams were presented with an extension of the first case and had to deliver a full report and a presentation later on the same day. This time, teams had to disaggregate the growth in global atmospheric carbon concentration and allow for anthropogenic emissions by different countries or groups of countries. The model also had to be extended to capture the relationship between emissions and an indicator of economic activity.

The winners of the 2019 Econometrics Game were the University of Melbourne (in 1st place), Maastricht University (in 2nd place) and, in 3rd place, Aarhus University.