The Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE is supporting a total of four teams in the regional preliminary round of this year's nationwide school competition YES! which begins for SAFE this week with the so-called kick-off events. During these events, the individual school groups will meet virtually with the researchers who will offer topics for SAFE in the 2021 YES! competition.
Sabine Bernard from SAFE's Household Finance research area is supervising students from IB Berufliche Schulen Asperg in Baden-Württemberg and students from Maria-Ward-Schule Aschaffenburg. For these two teams, the topic is “Is it a Man's World? Women and the capital market” and questions about how to boost women's self-confidence to deal with finance or insurance and overcome outdated role models in the world of finance.
The school groups from the Rhineland-Palatinate private high school Raiffeisen-Campus and the Goethe-Gymnasium Emmendingen are supervised by Eveline Wuttke, Professor of Business Education at the Goethe University Frankfurt, with SAFE support. Under the title “Young People are not interested in finance related topic. How could this be changed?”, the groups are looking at how to get young people interested in finance-related topics and why financial literacy is important for young people with a view to earning their first money themselves, paying rent and health insurance.
SAFE in its second year as an academic partner
In 2021, SAFE is involved in the YES! competition for the second consecutive year as an academic partner, which takes place in five German regions. In addition to SAFE, the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), the Walter Eucken Institute, and the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research are involved in the South-West region. YES! is a project of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Center for Economics and the Joachim Herz Foundation and is under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).
In the respective regional rounds, the students themselves vote on the team that is to win. The best idea is selected at the national finals and finally awarded a prize at the BMWi in Berlin. Last year, the team led by SAFE Fellow Simone Wies and the European School Rhein-Main Bad Vilbel made it through to the national final.
This year's YES! competition will initially take place digitally due to the pandemic. Until May, the teams are in the drafting phase and are in constant contact with their supervisors. The individual regional finals will then follow in June.
More information on YES! – Young Economic Summit can be found here
