The winning team from the Vancouver School of Economics receives the award in Ottawa. Pictured: Golrokh (Goli) Eshtiaghi, Luigi Vicencio, Krishna Paudel, Dr. Emrul Hasan, Irene Berezin, Dr. Tiff Macklem (Governor, Bank of Canada), and Sean Li (Back to front, left to right)
The Vancouver School of Economics at UBC is proud to congratulate its team of students on their victory at this year’s Governor’s Challenge competition in Ottawa. VSE’s team prepared for the competition under the mentorship of VSE lecturer Dr. Emrul Hasan, and received additional coaching from Dr. Amartya Lahiri and other VSE faculty. This year’s team included seven VSE undergraduate students in the following roles:
- Irene Berezin – Presenter
- Golrokh (Goli) Eshtiaghi – Presenter
- Katherine Karapetrovic – Team Member
- Sahaj Khanna – Team Member
- Sean Li – Presenter
- Krishna Paudel – Presenter
- Luigi Vicencio – Alternate
The Governor’s Challenge is a national competition hosted annually by the Bank of Canada, with teams competing as they simulate the role of advisor to the Bank’s Governing Council. Specifically, the Bank of Canada tasks competitors with, “giving a presentation on the economic outlook for Canada and making a monetary policy recommendation to a panel of senior central bank officials.”
Notably, the students advised the Bank in their November 2025 presentation to hold overnight interest rates at 2.25%, a decision mirrored by the Bank in its official announcement on January 28, 2026.
The final round of the competition took place in Ottawa on Saturday, January 31st, and included five teams from Acadia University (receiving runner-up), the Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Toronto – St. George and University of Ottawa. The first round was conducted through video conference, and involved more than 100 students from 27 Canadian universities. This competition carries the potential for significant impact on participating students’ careers, because, according to the Bank of Canada, “since the first competition, over 70 participants have gone on to join the Bank.”
This year marked the eleventh year of the competition, which began in 2015, and is the second victory for the University of British Columbia, which first won in 2020 under the guidance of VSE’s Dr. Jonathan Graves and Dr. Jesse Perla.
Read more about the award: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2026/02/university-of-british-columbia-crowned-national-champion-of-the-governors-challenge/
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The Vancouver School of Economics is the top economics department in Canada, and is home to leading scholars making a global impact with their research. To see the latest research and learn more about the faculty, visit economics.ubc.ca.
