Tufts students over the weekend earned second place — their best ever finish — in the College Fed Challenge, a mock monetary policy debate hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
Four Tufts students competed against teams from 19 other area schools, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Boston College and the competition's winners, Bentley University. Bentley will go on to represent the Boston Federal Reserve District in the National Finals competition held in December in Washington.
This is the fourth year Tufts has fielded a team for the challenge, which junior and team member Jay Joshi said promotes awareness of much needed economics knowledge. "When people hear the news, they hear things like quantitative easing and don't really understand what it's about. … This fosters information and knowledge about the Fed and monetary policy," Joshi said. "We live in unique times. It's good to have the base of knowledge to see how this affects all of us."
The Fed Challenge began with the goal of increasing financial literacy and increasing exposure to monetary policy among youth, according to Deb Bloomberg, economic education specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
"The first goal of the Challenge is to make sure students have a better understanding of how monetary policy works and the role of the Fed in economics," Bloomberg told the Daily. "The second is to spark a general interest in economics."
Student teams were required to give a 20-minute presentation discussing current economic and financial conditions in support of their monetary policy recommendations. A panel of judges comprised of economists, academics and Federal Reserve officials then questioned the groups for an additional 10 minutes, according to the team's faculty advisor, Lecturer of Economics Christopher McHugh.
Teams can adopt the role of any group of stakeholders in order to present their positions. Tufts chose to tackle the challenge as a newspaper editorial staff.
"They pretended that they were going to write an editorial about what policy they were going to prescribe, which allowed them to say things feds couldn't say," McHugh said.
At the challenge, teams competed against one another in one of four separate divisions. The winners of each division then progressed to a second round, in which they competed against the three other group winners, according to team member Will Schwartz, a senior.
Tufts teams had never made it out of the group stage before this year, according to McHugh.
Bloomberg said that the judges this year were impressed by the Tufts students' ability to link data to theory, imaginative policy analysis and teamwork.
"The imaginative analysis was a hallmark of Tufts' presentation and the reason why Tufts placed so high," Bloomberg said.
McHugh applauded the team's willingness to get creative and propose less traditional policies.
"They had a bold strategy to do something a little more daring," McHugh said. "They talked about lowering interest rate in reserves, something a little bit out of the park."
Senior and team member Tyler Cooper agreed. "We tried a different and more creative format, and they liked that," Cooper said.
Schwartz attributed the team's success to this willingness to propose contentious policies, including lowering the interest rate.
"A lot of people are afraid to say things that would upset the judges," Schwartz said. "The reason we did so well was that we offered up polices others were afraid to suggest."
Bloomberg said that every year, the challenge presents students with increasingly difficult situations.
"The economy is complicated more every year, and teams really have substantially more of a task every year," Bloomberg said. "They've always risen to it and been able to come up with profound solutions."
Schwartz echoed Bloomberg's sentiments and said that the new economic challenges have made the competition more exciting.
"In high school … there weren't very many interesting things going on, and the discussion revolved around whether or not we were in a bubble," Schwartz said. "Now there is a lot more to discuss, more extreme policies."
Tufts enters the competition at a slight disadvantage every year, Schwartz said, because unlike many of its competitors, it does not have a class that specifically prepares teams for the competition, among other resources.
"Other schools have invested a lot more time and have a lot more support, but we only have four people," Schwartz said. "Others have five as well as understudies and support staff. Yale had a Nobel prize winner as their advisor."
Despite the team's disadvantage entering into the challenge, McHugh was impressed with the team's success this year.
"Tufts kids did really well, especially in the question and answer session — most students usually don't do well in this area," McHugh said. "If they want to win next year, they just need to do a little better in the presentation and a little better in the question and answer session."
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Matt Repka contributed reporting to this article.
