‘Economics is abstract.’
‘It’s all maths anyway.’
Well, no longer! With Econ Frame, students have a chance to connect what they study in CORE Econ’s ebooks with the world around them.
Econ Frame is a photo competition where learners are invited to submit a photo showing an economics concept presented in any of CORE Econ’s ebooks – alongside a few lines of explanation. This project is jointly run by CORE Econ and the Centre for Teaching and Learning Economics (CTaLE) at UCL. It’s led by Lavinia Moldovan (Mount Royal University) and Ramin Nassehi (University College London).
We received more than 80 submissions this year from high school and undergraduate learners around the world. Many of them successfully portrayed, with powerful images, important economic concepts, such as: external effects, scarcity and optimal allocations, and inequality.
Out of a very talented pool of contestants, we chose four winners of Econ Frame 2023:
- Anoeska Redding, from the British School in the Netherlands, with Graffiti: art or treasure?, reflecting on the double nature of the external effects associated with this type of street art.
- Kurt Witmer, from Mount Royal University, Canada, with Creative destruction and the AI dilemma, an original take on AI’s role as the motor of another wave of creative destruction like the Industrial Revolution.
- Yohann Aaron Arthur Drego, from University College London, with Combatting pollution with nudge theory, an example of a nudge at work to stop people throwing cigarette butts on the street.
- Jay Leong, from Dubai English Speaking College, UAE, with Money grows on trees, a visual reminder of a ‘tragedy of the commons’ tackled over time with adequate policies.
The jury also awarded honourable mentions to submissions of Ana Teodorescu, Joshua James MacKinnon, Caspar Storen, Kenny Lithwick, Lucy Hunt, Jeanne Dombret, Ruslan Kim, Xinghan Shao, Keonyi Kim, Seoyoon Hannah Hong, Molly Smith, Cheuk Yan Kong, and a team comprising of Effi Tiekoura, Miquel Tirach, Alexandre Nau, and Nabil Nafouri.
Submissions for Econ Frame 2024 will open in late 2023 and run until Spring 2024. Follow CORE Econ on Twitter or Facebook, or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates.
More about Econ Frame
At its heart, Econ Frame is a research exercise as it stimulates students to seek the economics that surrounds them in everyday life and the wider world. It’s about developing an ‘eye’ for economics, linking economic theories and concepts to their lived experiences.
More than that, Econ Frame underscores that economics isn’t just about abstract models or aggregate data – it’s about humans, communities, and societies. It’s about the choices we make at the local, national and global level and the impact of those choices on different groups of people.
In terms of presentation, the competition also brings an innovative twist, merging economics with elements of humanities and arts. This interdisciplinary approach encourages creativity and diversified thinking, redefining the traditional boundaries of ‘presentation’ in economics.
