The Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA) is the regional association of Latin American and the Caribbean central banks. Since 1952, its main purpose has been the cooperation among its members in order to promote a deeper understanding of monetary and financial issues within the region.
Pursuing promotion of economic research in Latin America and the Caribbean, CEMLA's Research Management has organized the "Contest of research posters for students in economics". The contest consists in presenting a poster based on a research paper carried out by students in economics of academic institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

To be considered in the contest, a poster must deal with topics of interest for central banks. Selected papers will be presented by videoconference using a poster to support their material; economists specialized in fields of Latin American and the Caribbean central bank topics will evaluate the posters. 

 

Rules of the Contest

Participants must be undergraduate students in economics of Latin American and the Caribbean academic institutions. Both students currently studying the academic degree and former students who finished their studies after January 2013 may participate.

  1. The research paper topics must be of relevance to Latin American and the Caribbean central banks, such as: a) price stability and its related aspects, such as exchange rate regimes and monetary policy; b) financial stability and related topics, such as financial regulation, macroprudential policy, central banks' function as lender of last resort, and payment systems; c) national and international coordination considering the suggested topics mentioned in the last two bullet points.
  2. The papers must be of analytic nature rather than descriptive.
  3. The papers may be in Spanish or English. 
  4. The papers may have one or several authors.
  5. No more than one paper per author will be accepted. If a paper is written by more than one author, each of them must approve the paper's presentation for the contest. 
  6. The papers that are submitted must be original and unedited, and in their final versions. That is, they cannot have been published in any form other than working papers. 
  7. The papers are not allowed to exceed 20 pages (including text, tables, figures, references, appendix, etc.), with Times New Roman 12 letter and double-spaced.
  8. The first page of the paper must include an abstract with a limit of 250 words, JEL classification, and key words that define the article. 
  9. In the last stage, papers will be presented by videoconference for 10 minutes, using the poster as support material.
  10. The poster should work as visual support that summarizes the main ideas of the research paper.
  11. The poster will consist of a single slide which can be made in PowerPoint.
  12. The poster cannot include more than 4,000 characters (including spaces), in Times New Roman 12 letter, and can include text, figures, graphs, etc.
  13. Participant(s) must be able to share the poster with the jury during her(their) videoconference presentation, either in pptx (PowerPoint) or pdf (Adobe) format.


Stages of the Contest:

The contest consists of the following four stages:

First stage. The due date is August 31, 2014. Students must send their papers in a file in PDF format by email to the address: <carteles@cemla.org>. The student must write the following in the email's body text: his complete name (or names for the case of several authors), the research's title, the institution to which he or she belongs to, his/her level of education (year, semester, quarter), and a summary of the research paper not exceeding 250 words. Participants who had already finished their studies must specify the date in which they finished their studies. Additionally, a professor/adviser, who had supervised the research paper, has to send an email validating the paper as original.

Second stage. Members of CEMLA's Economic Research Management do a shortlist of the research papers. On September 30, 2014, CEMLA personnel send instructions to these participants on how to elaborate the poster. Evidently, the poster is based on the research paper.

Third stage. On October 2014, the shortlist participants present their posters by videoconference in front of a jury formed of researchers of Latin American and the Caribbean central banks.
Fourth stage. A winning paper will be selected and up to two other papers will be able to receive honorable mentions. 

In case of a tie between two or more papers, the prize will be equally divided between the participants, and within the individual teams, the prize will also be equally divided. The contest may be declared void.

For any questions, please send an email to <carteles@cemla.org>.

 

Prizes:

  • First place: 1,500 dollars
  • Honorable mentions: 500 dollars for each one.


The prizes will be deposited in the bank account of the winners or paid by check. Additionally, a certificate of achievement will be sent through courier services to all the winners (both the first place and the honorable mentions).