History
The Carroll Round, an annual international economics conference at Georgetown University, provides a unique forum for research and discussion among the nation’s top undergraduates. Now in its seventh year, the Carroll Round is supported through the generosity of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University's John Carroll Scholars Program, Carroll Round alumni, and private donors. The goal of the Carroll Round is to foster the exchange of ideas among the leading undergraduate international economics students by encouraging and supporting the pursuit of scholarly innovation in the field.
The conference fosters the exchange of ideas among participants and prominent members of the academic and policy-making communities through presentations, discussions, and lectures. Students present journal length articles based on original research in panels moderated by economics professor and practitioners, which are then followed by discussion. In previous years, a number of articles have focused on a wide variety of topics within International Economics, including: The Role of Hedge Funds in World Financial Crises, by Maria Jelescu; Political Resources, External Quasi-Rents, and Economic Management in Post-Colonial Africa, by Benn Eifert; and Monetary Options for Postwar Iraq: Iraq's Botched Currency Reform, by Matt Sekerke.
The Carroll Round also sponsors two keynote speeches during the conference from eminent scholars and practitioners in the field of Economics. Past keynote speakers at the conference include Dr. William Easterly of New York University, Dr. R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University, Dr. Lawrence B. Lindsey, former Chairman of the National Economic Council, Dr. John F. Nash Jr., a Nobel Laureate of Princeton University, Dr. Maurice Obstfeld of UC Berkeley, Dr. Peter R. Orszag of the Brookings Institution, Dr. Edwin M. Truman of the Institute for International Economics, Dr. John Williamson of the Institute for International Economics. The conference also includes a meeting at the Federal Reserve, where participants have engaged with Governors Ben Bernanke, Roger Ferguson, and Donald Kohn.
Participating students are selected from the country’s leading economics programs, including the University of Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. Many have gone on to pursue graduate work in Economics at prestigious programs around the world, including Oxford, MIT, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan. Other alumni have gone on to work at the World Bank and the Federal Reserve, as well as at leading consulting and financial firms.