In May, Vignesh Panchanatham ‘18 was presented with the Halbert White ‘72 Prize in Economics during the Princeton University economics department’s Class Day celebration, which recognized the achievements of the year’s graduating seniors. This honor is awarded to the year’s highest-performing senior economics major, who demonstrates excellence in their coursework as well as their Junior Paper and Senior Thesis.
Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Princeton economics department chair, said that Panchanatham “forged an intellectually challenging path throughout his Princeton economics education by consistently taking and mastering demanding courses and excelling in his Junior Independent Work and Senior Thesis.”
After winning the 2022 National Economics Challenge in June, Class of 2022 members Zach Clark, Harsh Deep, Shahzeb Lakhani and Rohan Thakur collected another major win at the International Economics Olympiad, held remotely last week. Their win in June earned them the opportunity to represent the United States at IEO. Deep and Thakur each won gold medals, ranking them top 20 in the world, while Clark and Lakhani each earned a silver, landing them both in the top 50. Another gold medal was won by Sam Lieman, a member of their team from Mt. Hebron High School. The team edged out three-time IEO champions Brazil by less than half a point.
Earlier today, the Harker team of recent graduates Zach Clark, Harsh Deep, Shahzeb Lakhani and Rohan Thakur won the 2022 National Economics Challenge, held in New York City, becoming the first team in school history to do so. They later defeated China in an online match to become International Economics Champions. The final round of the national competition consisted of a two-hour quiz bowl between the top four teams. The full broadcast of the Quiz Bowl, hosted by CNBC, is available on YouTube.
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May 25, 2022
Harker’s National Economics Challenge team has reached the finals! Zach Clark, Harsh Deep, Shahzeb Lakhani and Rohan Thakur will trek to New York City in June for the final stage of this year’s competition as one of the final four teams. This same team took first place in April at the California Economics Challenge. Each stage of the competition tests students’ understanding of micro- and macroeconomics as well as knowledge of current world economies. The competition started at the state level, which was followed by a national 45-question quiz. Teams that moved on to the semifinals then created a case study to determine the final four teams.
Last week, Natasha Sarin ‘07 was featured in a piece by The New York Times, which focused on her work in President Joe Biden’s administration to track down and claim the revenue owed by tax cheats (also known as the tax gap), and how it figures into the president’s infrastructure plan.
According to the story, Sarin’s appointment indicated the importance of tax code compliance in the administration. Trained at Harvard and formerly a professor of law and finance at the University of Pennsylvania, she was hired in March by Janet Yellen, U.S. secretary of the treasury, and worked with economist (and former treasury deputy secretary during the Clinton administration) Larry Summers at Harvard to devise a way to reduce the tax gap. Their research, published in 2019, stated that the tax gap could be reduced by 15 percent by empowering the Internal Revenue Service to increase audits of the wealthy and instituting more thorough reporting requirements.
The piece also touches on Sarin’s other notable collaborations, including her work with Congressman Ro Khanna, as well as her activities and achievements as a Harker student, such as captaining the varsity basketball team and her involvement in hiring rapper Snoop Dogg for an event on youth violence.
Upper school students had two big recent successes in economics competitions. Karan Bhasin, grade 12, recently won in the grades 11-12 category in the Council for Economic Education’s 2021 Student Video Contest, in which students were asked to make a one-minute video containing economic advice they would give to President Joe Biden. Bhasin’s ideas included targeted economic relief for those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, providing resources to local governments and bringing solar power to low-income neighborhoods.
On April 18, juniors Shrey Khater, Melody Luo, Ayan Nath and Yejin Song won the Brattle Economic Case Presentation portion of the UChicago DSP Pre-Collegiate Business and Economics Competition. This event gave each team eight to 10 minutes to present a solution to an assigned case study, after which the students were asked follow-up questions about their presentations by the judges.
Earlier this week, the first issue of the upper school’s student-run economics magazine, “Equilibrium,” was published at Harker’s Issuu site. The 64-page magazine contains stories on problems facing pensioners in China, how COVID-19 has affected how people consume media and the economic principles demonstrated in the card game “Magic: The Gathering” and Nintendo’s “Animal Crossing” video game.
“At the end of the sophomore year, we were looking into ways to expand the reach of economics at Harker,” said rising senior Arushi Saxena, who co-edited and co-designed “Equilibrium” with fellow rising senior Michelle Si. “We were aware of the several classes offered and saw the interest that classes such as Game Theory and AP Economics drew, but realized that there was a lack of opportunities for students to delve further into the field.” The magazine provided an opportunity for students to investigate topics in economics they found personally interesting. “Our main purpose was to inspire economic curiosity and scholarship, and, as we say in our mission statement, we hope to illuminate the importance of economics in the modern world by inspiring young thinkers to explore beyond the borders of the classroom and advance their interest in this field,” Saxena said.
Contributions to the magazine were a combination of student work that had been done in class and original pieces. In the future, Saxena said, the magazine’s creators “hope to include more diverse content, including interviews with economists, features for some of our speakers and economics book recommendations from Harker teachers. We would love to include the general student body more in economics discussions, so we look forward to sending out polls and surveys as well!”
Harker’s National Economics Challenge team has ranked in the top eight in the nation and qualified for a trip to New York City for this year’s national finals! The team of seniors Jerry Chen, Melissa Kwan, Jimmy Lin and Justin Xie took first place last month at the Northern California finals, held at the San Francisco Federal Reserve (pictured). At the national finals, to be held May 19-21, the students will take a six-part exam that tests their knowledge of microeconomics, macroeconomics, current events and other relevant topics. Best of luck!
Late last month, the College Board revealed that seven Harker students and one 2017 alumna received perfect scores on Advanced Placement exams they took in May 2017, earning every possible point as well as the maximum score of five. Seniors Akhil Arun and Adriano Hernandez and 2017 graduate Divya Rajasekharan earned three of just 60 perfect scores on the AP Macroeconomics exam, while senior Vignesh Panchanatham earned one of only 26 perfect scores in AP Microeconomics.
On the AP Computer Science A exam, senior Swapnil Garg, junior Ryan Adolf and sophomores Eileen Li and Kyle Li earned four of 112 perfect scores. Harker was one of just 17 schools that had four or more students earn perfect scores on AP exams last year. According to the College Board, nearly 5 million AP exams were taken by almost 3 million students in 2017. Only 511 students earned every possible point.
A team of Harker students won the first Stanford Pre-Collegiate Economics Competition, held April 15 at Stanford University. The team of Adriano Hernandez, Alan Jiang, Jacob Ohana, Derek Yen and Randy Zhao, all grade 11, narrowly defeated teams from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and The Bishop’s School in San Diego. During the competition, Harker’s team gave a presentation on the federal response to the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis. The competition also included a multiple-choice exam. As a bonus, the students also had the opportunity to attend a talk by influential macroeconomist John Taylor, who is currently a professor at Stanford.