ZEW Congratulates YES! – Young Economic Summit for the Meritum Prize of the German Economy 2020
Dates and News
This year, the Meritum Promotion Prize of the Deutsches Aktieninstitut e.V. has been awarded to the YES! – Young Economic Summit project. ZEW Mannheim, academic partner for YES! and mentor of the winning teams of the past three years, congratulates Germany’s largest school competition regarding global economic issues on receiving the prize, which is endowed with 25,000 euros.
“Congratulations to YES! It is great that this project offers young people the opportunity to present their innovative ideas in public. We are proud to be part of the YES! – Young Economic Summit,” emphasises ZEW President Professor Achim Wambach.
Dr. Hans-Ulrich Engel, President of Deutsches Aktieninstitut e.V., praises YES! as an important project to promote economic and political education in Germany. “This initiative offers young people the opportunity to develop their own creative ideas on how challenges in business, politics, the environment and society can be solved,” says Engel.
For the fourth time, ZEW economists will support the student teams of the South-West region with their expertise in developing forward-looking ideas. As in the past three years, the ZEW teams are highly motivated to perform successfully again in 2020.
Meritum Prize of the German Economy
The Meritum Prize of the German Economy is awarded annually by Deutsches Aktieninstitut e.V. The prize honours personalities, organisations, initiatives and projects that have committed themselves to the German economy, the concerns of the social market economy as well as economic education and a better understanding of economic interrelationships. The prize is awarded in the categories ‘honour’ and ‘promotion’.
About YES!
The YES! – Young Economic Summit falls under the patronage of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The YES! programme, a joint project by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and the Joachim Herz Stiftung, is one of the biggest German school competitions aimed at getting young people to engage with global economic and social issues. Over the course of a six-month mentoring programme, student teams tackle pressing issues facing future generations. Researchers from various Leibniz institutions in Germany support the students by providing scientific expertise. In 2020, 16 partner institutes are participating in the competition. ZEW forms part of the South-West region, in which the LOEWE Centre SAFE (“Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe”) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO are participating for the first time. By participating in YES!, students explore immediate political, social, economic and environmental challenges, giving them the opportunity to contribute their voices to current economic policy discourse.
