Write about the economic questions shaping the future

Every generation needs a first rung, or the skills ladder breaks. Entry-level jobs are both output and the hidden tuition a society pays to train its next generation — when they are automated, who inherits that bill? Essays can weigh training incentives, apprenticeships, the split between school and on-the-job learning, and the cost of intervening.

The same education machine can be a ladder of mobility or a moat around existing advantage — the difference lies not in education itself but in who can afford the price of entry. Consider both private returns and wider social effects, and say when education narrows inequality and when it starts to entrench it.

The same house is wealth to its owner and a wall to those still outside: asset logic wants the price to rise, shelter logic wants it affordable, and the two promises cannot both be kept. Make your choice between the goals explicit — and say who pays for it.

When a product carries no price tag, the price has not disappeared — it has changed into currencies you barely notice: data and attention. Invisible prices are the hardest to bargain over. Essays can weigh this implicit pricing, market concentration, privacy costs, and the efficiency losses regulation might bring.

Inflation, and the cure for inflation, are both redistribution — just never put to a vote. Borrowers, renters, workers, savers and asset holders stand at different ends of that redistribution. Treat these groups separately, and say who gains and who pays.

Security is, at bottom, an insurance policy: worth paying for, easy to overprice — and no word is borrowed by protectionism more readily. Give operational criteria that separate a real risk exposure from a tariff wearing a new name, rather than a blanket verdict.

The bill for the transition is already written; only the addressee line is blank. Declining to choose is itself a choice — it books the cost to future generations. Compare ability to pay, responsibility for emissions and share of benefit, and say whether your scheme survives politically if burdens concentrate.

All seven official prompts are published; read the official text on this page or the WYE platform. Writing and submission open immediately.

The last day of regular submission, with no late fee. The first essay is free; the second and third are US$20 each. The closing time and time zone shown on the WYE platform govern.

Submission stays open with one fixed US$10 late fee, charged once whether you send one, two, or three essays. No entries are accepted for this edition after the window closes.

WYE requires no exclusivity, does not forbid entering the same subject elsewhere, and never penalises you in review for competing elsewhere. Do check the other side’s rules on first publication and duplicate submission.

Copyright always stays with you. Entering publication grants WYE a non-exclusive licence to publish, display, and archive; the same piece can still go into applications, a personal site, or another publication.

Structured AI and external-assistance disclosure, citation and data-source checks, and sampled process materials. The point of verification is that students who did the work themselves are seen.

A paragraph-by-paragraph writing walkthrough, ten modules of open resources, and eight public readings — no registration required. The aim is to get you thinking and seen, not to sell a certificate.

The competition is open to eligible entrants worldwide, with no education or age restriction; every entry is judged against the same published criteria.

Entries are individual and single-authored, with a maximum of three mutually independent essays per person. Reading and preparing at this stage is neither a confirmation of entry nor a formal submission.

Each essay must be an independent piece answering one official prompt and meeting all submission and disclosure requirements on its own. Fees buy only the right to submit additional entries; they never raise a score, affect shortlisting, or create an advantage in review. The late fee is charged once per submission batch, regardless of how many essays it contains.

The draft judges formally assess must be in English. Entrants may state their first or home language and submit a version in that language as a clearly labelled appendix.

The home-language version is optional, does not count towards the 2,000-word limit, and is not scored separately. Every entrant must declare whether AI or machine translation was used; if so, they must state the tools, the scope of use, and how the English version was checked and revised by hand.

• PDF and DOCX are accepted.
• If review is anonymized, the essay file must show no name, school, or contact details.
• The first page lists the title, chosen prompt number, and final word count.
• Recommended file names and size limits will be stated on the submission page.

• The tools used
• The purposes
• The stages or sections affected
• How accuracy was checked and intellectual ownership retained

Entrants who used no AI must still explicitly select “none.”

University student reviewers who complete the published evaluation training and pass the examination score anonymously against the published rubric, with calibration and cross-checking. They are not unprepared volunteers: all must complete uniform training and sample-essay calibration, pass the examination, and observe anonymity, conflict-of-interest recusal, and confidentiality rules.

After the official shortlist passes authenticity verification, practicing economics professors from leading universities take part in the final academic judgment and award selection, providing direct comments to first-, second-, and third-prize winners. Professor feedback is not a university recommendation letter, credit, or admissions assessment, and professors’ universities give WYE no official endorsement.

• Published scoring criteria and dimension weights
• Reviewer training syllabus and study materials
• Sample-essay scoring and calibration exercises
• Minimum standards to pass training and examination
• Anonymity, conflict-of-interest, and recusal rules
• Re-check mechanism for divergent reviews
• Reviewer confidentiality, AI-use, and integrity requirements

Full training materials will be publicly accessible from the policies page once compiled.Public soon

• Not every entrant is reviewed by a professor
• No promise of one-on-one professor video calls for every shortlistee
• Professors’ universities give WYE no official endorsement
• Professor feedback is not a recommendation letter, credit, or admissions assessment

Student reviewers’ names and schools are displayed only with personal and school authorization; school logos are never used without permission.

• Conducted by the WYE review team against the same published rubric as the competition
• Explains the essay’s main strengths, main problems, scoring basis, and directions for improvement
• The appeal checks for clear scoring omissions, misapplied criteria, or procedural problems
• No guarantee that scores, the shortlist, or awards will change

• Higher-level written explanation and appeal checks by core committee members
• Paying more does not raise the probability of changing the result
• Confers no priority publication, mentor matching, or other competitive advantage

1. Why this prompt was chosen
2. How the central argument took shape
3. Which sources or evidence mattered most, and how their quality was judged
4. What changed between the outline, the first draft, and the final text
5. What help was received from others
6. Whether and how AI tools were used
7. What the student would most want to improve with more time

• Whether the account matches the submitted essay
• Whether the student understands the main argument, evidence, and limitations
• Whether external help and AI use match the original disclosure
• Whether the student can describe a credible research, writing, and revision process

Videos are never scored on accent, presentation style, camera quality, editing, background, or production values.

Without separate explicit consent, videos are never published or used in promotion. Their purpose is to verify how the work was done, not to judge performance.

• Videos are collected only from sampled provisional shortlistees
• Access is limited to staff authorised for integrity verification
• Parental or guardian consent is required where applicable
• Files are securely deleted after the retention period, which is published separately
• Reasonable alternatives are available for disability, accessibility, safety, or serious privacy constraints