Jurre Hermans / Courtesy Wolfson Economics Prize
10-year-old Jurre Hermans from the Netherlands proposed a solution to Greece's debt problem using pizza as a metaphor.
Solving the eurozone crisis and Greece's increasingly perilous financial state doesn't really sound like the type of problem that can be solved by using pizza as a metaphor, but 11-year-old Jurre Hermans didn't let that stop him.
When the judging panel for the 250,000 pounds ($399,000) Wolfson Economics Prize announced its short list of five finalists today, it also singled out a sixth person among the 452 contestants. The Dutch boy, who was 10 years old at the time, offered a one-page solution (Dad helped him with the translation to English, he told the judges) along with a diagram that turned Greece into a pizza.
In Hermans' solution, Greece would leave the eurozone and citizens would be required to exchange their euros for drachma. He even suggested specific penalties for people who tried to hide euros or smuggle them out of the country.
Although he didn't get into details of the exchange rate, Hermans said drachma would be "dramatically" less valuable. He underscored this point with a sad face drawn on the stick figure Hermans labeled "Greek people," and added in his entry, "You see, the Greek guy does not look happy!!"
With that pool of euros, which Hermans depicted as a pizza, the Greek government could pay off its creditors. "Everyone who has a debt gets a slice of the pizza," he wrote. According to his diagram, banks and companies to which the troubled nation owed money would all get paid back in proportion to their debts.
Hermans finished with, "Of course if a country has paid back all his debts, he can return to the eurozone."
While the pizza theory of economics didn't make the final cut for the Wolfson competition, the judges did award Hermans a 100 euro prize for his efforts.
0 коммент.:
Post a Comment