Last month, four Temple economics majors were declared the winners of the 2023-24 Fiscal Challenge, a national competition that aims to raise student interest in economics and fiscal policy through in-depth experiential learning. Past National Champions have included teams from Stanford, Harvard and Notre Dame.

The Fiscal Challenge, established in 2013, challenges teams of students to develop creative fiscal policy proposals meant to stabilize the nation's debt over decades. After an open submission preliminary round, the Temple team was one of only six selected to compete in the finals in Washington, D.C. (You can read team member Karina McKenna give her account of the prelims.)

We spoke to the members of the team, Akash Banerjee, Karina McKenna, Matthew Drayton and Zachary Somogyi, as well as their primary advisor, Professor Michael Leeds, and asked them to tell us the story of their run through the Fiscal Challenge.

Akash Banerjee (Senior, College of Liberal Arts): I just received an email about it randomly in December. I still don't understand how I got it. I had never heard of Mike Aguilar, who runs the nonprofit that does this competition, until I randomly received that email from him. I don't know how I got the email, but I did, and I thought, "Okay, this doesn't seem like a scam, and I know a few people…"

Akash began reaching out to fellow students he thought might be a good fit.

Karina (Senior, Fox School of Business): Matt, Akash, and I were on the E-Board for the Temple Economic Society, and then Zach knew Akash. He transferred in [from Northern Michigan in Fall 2022]. So [Akash] just put together a dream team.

Akash: It was really just based on gut instinct. I think these people are interested in doing something good for the world but also have a lot of drive and a lot of ambition. When you put minds like those together, they can do some pretty cool things.

Karina: I remember he messaged me when I was in India, at my friend's wedding. I got the message, and I thought, "Yeah, why not? That sounds cool. This is a space where we can just play around." We talk about policy in our free time anyway. 

Zachary Somogyi (Junior, CLA): I was pretty much like, "Yeah, sure. Sounds interesting, might as well." 

Matthew Drayton (Junior, CLA): I was the same as Zach, I would say. I was just like, "I'll do it. I have time."

Akash: I think we all figured we probably weren't going to make it to the final, so we'll just play around, and it's an experience to put on our resumes. Then it turned into this.

Karina: I don't think we really knew what we were getting ourselves into…

For the Fiscal Challenge's preliminary round, each team is given the same task: Submit a 20-minute video presentation laying out a budget plan that will keep the debt-to-GDP ratio at approximately 95% by Q2 2054, 30 years in the future. As the team began working, it quickly became clear how big of an undertaking the project would be. 

Matthew: In the beginning, we had to establish an understanding because it's not really taught in the curriculum. We took four or five meetings just to look at policies, do research and understand the topic. We had this big elaborate plan for what order we'd complete all the steps in before the March 8th deadline, but more than half of that time was solely spent researching the policies and looking stuff up. I think that just goes to show how time-intensive it really was.

Akash: The next step was figuring out what we want out of this beyond just bringing down this number. What do we want to do to the economy? What changes do we want to see outside of just bringing this number down to 95%?

Matthew: We argued about everything at every single meeting. We were always debating different topics, and it would get really intense. It felt like, on every single thing, there would be two different sides, and one person would speak, and then another person would say, "Okay. I completely disagree." 

Karina: And Professor Leeds would just be on meetings listening to it all, tolerating it.

Akash: Yeah. We'd say, "Oh, we're not going to waste your time, Professor Leeds." Then we'd spend 20 minutes arguing amongst each other in front of him.

Professor Leeds: It was tremendous fun watching them. What struck me most was the growing sophistication of their discussions and disagreements. When I first joined the group, they were all over the place with very little focus. As time went on, they narrowed their focus and began to argue about fine points of policy.

Zachary: We would go to [Professor Leeds] for sanity checks, I guess you could say. We'd say, "Alright, here's what we have, and this is the rubric. Are we crazy?"

Professor Leeds: I was nothing more than Joe McCarthy, the manager of the Yankees in the 1930s. My father used to say that he was the greatest manager in the history of baseball because he would put his right foot on the top step of the dugout, tell the team to "Go get 'em!" and they went and got them.

Matthew: We had to work those disagreements out, and I think that helped us in the end. Later on, when I talked to other teams about it, they would say, "Oh my gosh. No, we never argued."

Eventually, all of the debate and discussion would result in the team honing in on what was most important to them and sharpening the actual content of their submission.

Karina: For me personally, when I think of policy and goals for the economy, I think about promoting sustainability and wellbeing, and making things more equitable for everyone. So naturally, I went towards policies that would accomplish that. Broadband internet access came to my mind because that would help people gain access to employment and telemedicine, but also boost GDP and productivity because you can work from home, you can work from anywhere.

Akash: Our different perspectives had to come together because there were different parts of the rubric that each of us seemed to care more about. For example, legislative feasibility was a big one for me, and I know for Karina, it was about how our decisions would affect people. Then, Matt and Zach would say, "Okay, but what is this doing to the numbers?" and you can't have one of those components outshine the other. 

Karina: what helped us stand out was that [our submission] was well-rounded and inclusive. We had policies that tackled investments into human capital, tax reforms, structural reforms, stabilizing big social security, Medicare and making the trust funds solvent. I think that our holistic package helped us get there.

The team sent in their submission on March 8th. From there, they would wait an indeterminate amount of time to hear back from the judges.

Akash: Was it seven days? 

Zachary: I think it was only five days. I think it was on Friday that we heard back.

Matthew: I thought it was the weekend.

Zachary: Maybe. Maybe it was on Saturday.

Akash: I thought it was Tuesday after we submitted.

Zachary: It might've been a full week.

Karina: I think it was a Thursday.

Akash: We submitted on a Thursday, and I think we heard back on the Tuesday after, right?

Karina: Something like that.

At some point or another, the team did receive word that they were one of six teams chosen to move on to the in-person finals in Washington, DC. 

Akash: We were really not expecting it.

Professor Leeds: It's funny.  They were very disappointed with their performance in the preliminary round, and I prepared the same speech my mother used to give me when I went 0-4 in Little League: "You did your best. I think you're great."

Zachary: There was a part of me that thought we had a good chance of making it. But at the same time, I was hesitant. I wasn't confident in my confidence, I would say.

Karina: I did not think at all that we were going to make it to the final rounds. I think I was the last one to find out. I was lying in bed. I remember looking at my phone, and I started freaking out. I was like, "Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh." My roommate heard me and came to ask if I was okay.

On April 12th, the team traveled to DC to compete in the Fiscal Challenge finals, where they'd present to a panel of policy experts. The other five teams they'd be up against included Northeastern, Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an independent team comprised of representatives from Northeastern and Notre Dame.

Karina: We found out that [some schools] have designated, established clubs specifically for this competition. Some of them said they take applications and they start with 30 people on the team.

Zachary: We didn't really realize that six wasn't just the limit but also the expected number of team members. The other teams all had six people, and some of them had additional people who helped work on their presentations but didn't come to the finals. We were just the four of us the whole time.

Akash: [The format is] 15 minute presentation, 15 minute Q&A. And all of the teams are anonymous—the judges don't know who is from where.

Karina: I was secretly confident that, once we were there, we were going to show up and show out and do our thing.

Akash: I think the energy and adrenaline of sitting next to each other and being there in person made me stop overthinking. Sometimes, it's easy to let your anxieties and stuff get to you, but when you just let go and say, "Okay, we put in this work, let's just show it," it becomes a lot easier.

Karina: Most of the time, [in practice runs], we went over time a little bit, and I had that in mind during the actual presentation. I had mental timestamps of where we needed to be, and I was going last. I knew I needed three minutes to talk about everything I needed to talk about. I remember Matt was sitting to my right. He had these big policies about social security, defense and the IRS, and Akash just finished talking about his huge Medicare and carbon policies. I looked to Matt and said, "Matt, I need you to be efficient. We need you to be efficient." He just nods, looks away, and then, five seconds later, turns back and says, "Yeah." 

Professor Leeds: They were inserting items and moving things around the night before the competition. Other groups—some of whom had clearly memorized specific lines —might not have been able to pull this off, but their command of the material was such that they did it seamlessly.

Zach: We were all very generalist. That was one of the things that came up when we were talking to other teams. They seemed to have more specialized team members who might only know about the portion that they worked on. We all were working on all of it at all times.

Karina: We finished right on the dot. We finished right when time was called, it was so smooth.

Zachary: Yeah. It was exactly on the second.

Riding the emotional high of their presentation, all that was left to do was wait and see where they placed. After three more presentations, a lunch break, a few speeches and a networking event that the team referred to as "career speed dating," finally, the top teams were announced.

Professor Leeds: I will never forget the announcement that they had won. The emcee first announced the three "honorable mention schools." I was not surprised that Temple was not among them. The emcee then announced that Northeastern had finished third, and I thought, "Oh no! We're going to finish second, and the kids will be disappointed that they did not win." The emcee then said that Notre Dame was the runner-up, and I just went into a state of disbelief.  I gave each of them a big hug and couldn't stop laughing. I was just so happy for them.

Matthew: I'm not going to lie, I was surprised. I think Zach knows how surprised I was that we won.

Zachary: I can attest that he was in literal medical shock when we found out that we won. He was just blank-faced.

Karina: I was just like, "Yes, we did that. We did that." I was just really proud and so confident in how our presentation went. The energy in the room was really supportive about a new team like Temple winning. We were networking with the other teams, they invited us out to drinks and it was a very easygoing, very fun environment. 

Professor Leeds: They're National Champions. How many people can say that? Yes, they are remarkably smart, but there are a lot of smart people in the world. They worked so hard and meshed so well, sublimating their egos for the sake of the team. I don't know that I will ever have the opportunity to work with a better group of young people. As Jim Harbaugh would say about the Michigan football team, "Who's got it better than us?  Nobody!"

Today, with two of their members preparing to graduate, the team hopes that future Temple Owls will recognize the path they have forged for the university with their success in the Fiscal Challenge. Winning this competition puts Temple Economics on the radar as a fierce competitor, and they hope that torch continues to burn bright within clubs like the Temple Economics Society and Women in Economics. The group is emblematic of the fact Temple students operate differently. They are backed by a robust support system, from faculty, staff, and peers, but not coddled. That's what makes us unique, tenacious, and Temple-made.

Karina: I think that we really embody that with the outpouring of feedback and support we received. It takes a village to make something like this work, and I always feel the support from people who love our city and love our school.