HIEEC 2025-2026 Results
Winners
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Melody Zou
“System Migration: Retaining Residents in a Remote Revolution”
Melody Zou is a junior at Lexington High School in Massachusetts, just a short drive from Cambridge. She has been a part of semifinalist teams at both Northwestern and Harvard economics competitions and placed 2nd in Economics and 1st in Introduction to Business Concepts at the 2025 Massachusetts FBLA SLC. Melody has also received a 2024 Gold Presidential Volunteer Service Award for her community service. She is interested in economics, finance, and business, passions she pursues through hosting quiz bowl tournaments. Outside of school, you can find her volunteering at the Lexington Farmers’ Market or working as a math tutor. In her free time, she is an avid investor in the Pokémon trading card market.
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Elvyn Lim
Elvyn Lim is a junior at Bergen Catholic High School, whose academic interests sit at the intersection of finance, technology, and economic/public policy. He has conducted sports finance research at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and has published research in technology and media finance at NYU Stern School of Business. He has also co-authored a peer-reviewed paper at the Saïd Business School of Oxford University on defense innovation and military sustainment technology, with policy recommendations directed at the Department of Defense.
Believing that economic insight is only as powerful as its real-world application, Elvyn co-founded Arcanium, an AI-powered real estate renovation platform, which secured a founders' round backed by over $350K in funds led by Microsoft. He also founded both the first FBLA and BPA chapters at Bergen Catholic, building two of the school's most active communities around financial literacy and business leadership. These experiences at the frontier of financial research and entrepreneurship naturally led him to examine how blockchain technology is beginning to reshape the architecture of global public debt markets, inspiring his essay for this year's contest.
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Tabitha Kho
“Creative Destruction for All: How UBI Can be a Capitalist’s Dream”
Tabitha Kho is a sophomore at Seoul Foreign High School. Moving from Atlanta, Georgia to Seoul, South Korea opened her eyes to media literacy disadvantages faced by vulnerable groups, which she experiences as a recent immigrant navigating drastic changes in linguistic and cultural contexts, as a teaching assistant in a global digital literacy program, and as a leader in an advocacy club for the intellectually disabled.
Having self-studied economics, she is drawn to the perspective it offers for understanding the decisions that drive interactions among individuals and the impact of those interactions on the systems they inhabit. She shares this interest with readers of her school newspaper, where her articles apply economic thinking to shed light on such critical matters as: the morality of selling rights to hunt endangered species, the hidden costs of “free” offers, and whether or not to confess your love to your high school crush.
She is most interested in the applications of economic tools to design ethical and effective policy to reduce systemic inequality; this interest was further deepened by her participation in this year's HIEEC. In her two years of participation in the World Economics Cup, Tabitha has received the Highest Distinction, scoring in the regional top 10. She looks forward to continuing to study behavioral economics and media ethics, hoping to contribute to the field of economics.
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Finalists
Suhana Chauhan
Kabir Ghosh
Jasper Gould
Adil Efe Gülbahçe
Rhea Jain
Kwangjoo Kim
Chloe Lee
Nathan Lee
Haomin Li
Aryan Noor
Zeynep Poyraz
Sahana Kalyan Raman
Yashvi Shyamsukha
Melinda Song
Derrick Xie -
Highly Commended
Aarya Amin
Ahana Chandra
Ginevra Colapinto
William Guo
Ian Hong
Samaira Jain
Siyona Jain
Minjun Kim
Nhu Le
Ethan Liang
Arnav Maheshwari
Anoushka Poddar
Caleb Son
Rohan Taparia
Priyamvad Tripathi
2025-2026 Prompts
Prompt 1: Environment
As climate change intensifies, governments and corporations are turning to carbon offset markets and nature-based solutions (like reforestation or carbon capture) to meet emission targets. Yet critics argue these mechanisms allow wealthy nations and firms to “buy their way out” of real reductions, while creating new inequities for developing economies.
Evaluate the economic and environmental effectiveness of carbon offset markets as a tool for reducing global emissions. How might these markets influence international trade, investment, and development? Should countries prioritize direct emission reductions over offset schemes, or can both coexist effectively? Propose economic policies that could enhance the credibility and fairness of global carbon offset systems.
Prompt 2: Inequality
The rapid rise of generative AI and automation has sparked fears of a “productivity boom without wage growth,” where capital owners capture most of the benefits. Some economists propose implementing a universal basic income (UBI) or data dividend to redistribute the value created by automation.
Analyze the potential of universal basic income or data dividends as policy responses to technological inequality. What economic trade-offs might arise from decoupling income from labor, and how could these affect long-term growth, innovation, and social cohesion? Consider how different income groups and countries at varying levels of development might respond to such policies?
Prompt 3: Workforce & Education
Hybrid and remote work, accelerated by global digitalization, has reshaped labor markets and urban economies. As geographic proximity becomes less critical, cities face shifting housing demand, changing tax bases, and new infrastructure needs.
Examine the long-term economic implications of a global shift toward remote and hybrid work. How might this transformation affect productivity, urban inequality, and educational priorities? What role should governments and institutions play in balancing the benefits of flexibility with the risks of labor market fragmentation?
Prompt 4: Crypto/Finance
Amid rising debt levels and global inflation uncertainty, some governments have explored issuing tokenized sovereign bonds or blockchain-based currencies to improve transparency and accessibility. Yet such innovations raise questions about security, regulation, and the role of private intermediaries.
Assess the economic and financial stability implications of tokenized government bonds and blockchain-based public finance systems. Could such technologies democratize investment and improve fiscal transparency, or do they introduce new systemic risks? How should central banks and regulators adapt to a financial system increasingly built on distributed ledger technology?