A Polish student, Kinga Gruszka, won the final of the INternational Economics Olympiad (IEO) at the Money Museum in Budapest on Thursday. The two-day competition, held in English, saw 35 students from seven countries compete in economics in front of an international jury. Among the five Hungarian students, the best result was achieved by Csaba Iván Fekete, who came sixth in the final.
The Hungarian Economic Association (HEA) and the Czech INEV (Institut ekonomického vzdělávání z. ú. – Institute for Economic Education) organised the international final of the Economics Olympiad for Secondary School Students on 7 and 8 September at the Money Museum in Budapest. The competition was first held in the Czech Republic in 2016. Since 2019, Hungary has also organised the national competition every year, and in 2020 the first V4 international final was held, where the best students from the Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian competitions competed in English in economics. This year, in addition to students from the V4 countries, students from Greece and Bosnia also took part in the final in Budapest, while Chinese high school students joined the final online.
At the opening ceremony, the international finalists of the IEO were welcomed by Gyula Pleschinger, President of the HEA and member of the Monetary Council of the MNB; Martina Bacíková, Founder and CEO of INEV; and Tamás Tóth, Deputy CEO of MNB-EduLab Kft. Dani Rodrik, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President of the International Economics Association, welcomed the contestants by video message.
In the first round of the two-day international finals on 7 September, the contestants had to solve written tests in English, and on Thursday 8 September, the 10 best candidates in the written round gave oral presentations to a four-member jury of presidents and vice-presidents of the V4 economic associations. The winners of this year’s international final were: 1st Kinga Gruszka (Poland), 2nd Alkis Toutzianidis (Greece) and 3rd Jan Serwach-Głombski (Poland).
Following the announcement of the results, all finalists were given a guided tour of the Money Museum in English.