Congratulations to Princeton University senior Shirley Ren, whose paper received the top honor at this year’s International Atlantic Economic Conference hosted by the International Atlantic Economic Society (IAES).

Ren, pictured above with IAES competition coordinator Dr. Gary Clayton of Northern Kentucky University and IAES Executive Vice President Dr. Katherine S. Virgo of Emory University, is a member of the Class of 2024 majoring in Economics. She is also pursuing minors in Finance, Statistics and Machine Learning, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Political Economy, and East Asian Studies. Last year, she helped lead Princeton’s team to victory in the national College Fed Challenge competition organized by the Federal Reserve system. Eighty-four universities from across the country participated in the national competition, with Princeton taking home the top prize.

To encourage undergraduate interest in economic issues, the International Atlantic Economic Society invites students to compete in the IAES Annual Best Undergraduate Paper Award (BUPA) competition. The IAES strives to recognize and reward outstanding research conducted by undergraduate students worldwide. Each year, four finalists are selected to present their research orally.

Ren presented her paper, titled “The distributional effects of monetary policy shocks in China,” at the IAES conference in Philadelphia this October. In addition to a $1,000 prize, the first place winner receives an invitation to publish their research in the Atlantic Economic Journal.

The three other students name as finalists in the competition were Liam Prevelige of Dartmouth College, Prajjwal Dhungana of Kathmandu University in Nepal, and Andreas Gordon Christofides of the University of Maryland, College Park.

To learn more about the winners and their papers, read the prize announcement on the IAES website.