Mexico’s UNAM and CIDE Students Win CAF Essay Competition

Center for Economic Research and Education (CIDE)’s Ana Sofía Jiménez Quiroga and National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)’s Antonio Rojas Canela were crowned winners of the #IdeasForTheFuture essay competition, an initiative organized by CAF—development bank of Latin America—, aiming to share the region’s youth’s view of the future, as part of the celebration of its 50th anniversary. The jury is comprised of Banxico Economic Research General Director Daniel Chiquiar, National Director of Research at TEC Monterrey’s Governance School, and CAF Chief Economist Sergio Guerra.

During the award ceremony, CAF representative in Mexico Emilio Uquillas emphasized the institution’s role in the development of the region, and highlighted its recent evolution as generator of economic thought, with all the necessary tools—such as the contest in question—to engage young people into the debate on the main challenges facing the Aztec nation, thus helping it lead the way for other countries from various professional perspectives.

"CAF celebrates half a century of promoting sustainable development and regional integration among our member countries,” Uquillas said. “In this case, we welcome students’ focus on proposing solutions to address the region’s issues around globalization and efficiency of public policies.” He also said that thanks to Mexico’s academic track record the essays reflect the lessons learned from a solid perspective that focuses on improving well-being in society. “Sharing academic proposals is a solid foundation for Latin American integration” Uquillas added, congratulating the national winners and wishing the students the utmost success in this Latin American competition.

Ana Jiménez was awarded for her essay "The Shortcomings of the Latin American Strategy Against Globalization" in the “Innovation” category. Her work focuses on pinpointing the issues that have prevented the consolidation of Latin America as a productive and innovative region in the era of globalization, while proposing solutions to reduce inequality between countries through, for instance, fostering of SMEs as tools to boost productivity and promote innovation, learning and adaptation to the global phenomenon. 

Antonio Rojas’s ”Making Public Investment More Efficient in Latin America: The Importance of National Public Investment Systems”, on the other hand, shows the that some Latin American countries have ample room to improve their national public investment systems, which could result in higher rates of economic growth, greater coverage of public services and savings of resources that could be put to other uses. 

The next ceremony will take place during the CAF Conference, which will be held in Quito in November 2019, where local winners will go up against their peers from across 19 CAF member countries for a USD 2,000 prize in each category.

#IdeasForTheFuture is one of CAF’s 50th anniversary celebration activities, and promotes the exchange and discussion of ideas that help foster sustainable development and regional integration by encouraging the best university talents in Ibero-America.