Everything Economics at the University of Toronto
On March 4th, 2026, the Department of Economics held its annual awards ceremony. The Undergraduate Awards of Excellence in Economics event celebrated the achievements of undergraduates during the 2024-2025 academic year. The 28 awards had a total value of $37, 195.69 this year. [Read more…]
The Annual Berkowitz Lecture will be delivered by Professor Ralph Ossa, former Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization on 12 March 2026. The main event in Seeley Hall that evening will also celebrate the alumni community and the accomplishments of the MFE program and its students. One of those mini events will include the ceremonial awarding of the Michael Berkowitz Prize to MFE Class of 2026 student Kate Ni.
Given the graduating MFE student with the highest academic standing, the Michael Berkowitz Prize is named for the former chair of the Department of Economics and founder of the MFE program. It is funded through donations from the Berkowitz family as well as friends and colleagues of the late professor. Ni also won the Varouj A. Aivazian Award last year. That award recognizes the student with the highest academic standing in the first year of the program. [Read more…]
There is stability in independence. That’s the central finding of Mariana Garcia Mejia’s article, Beyond the Border: Rethinking Canada’s Economic Future Without the US. The third-year University College student recently won one of two awards through the Department of Economics Essay Prize in Economic Policy.
“Canada must certainly avoid conflict with its closest partner, but it should simultaneously reimagine its trade landscape to achieve a more stable, independent future’ Mejia wrote.
The award, part of the essay competition associated with the Smith Family Scholarship, recognizes students whose essays stand out for the quality of writing and the application of economics to an important question in public policy. For Garcia Mejia, whose majors are economics and statistics with a minor in mathematics, the creation of the essay involved emphasizing skills outside her immediate comfort zone. [Read more…]
Registration is open for the 2026 Annual Berkowitz Lecture.
Former Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization, Ralph Ossa will deliver The Multilateral Trading System: Resilience, Erosion, and the Role of Middle Powers.
Date: Thursday, March 12, 2026
Time: 6:30pm ET; a reception will follow the lecture
Location: Seeley Hall, Trinity College, 6 Hoskin Ave., Toronto, M5S 1H8
RSVP: Due to limited seating, guests are encouraged to RSVP as soon as possible
Madelyn Bardell doesn’t think working parents should be expected to provide childcare during their work hours. She compares the idea to expecting the same parents to build the road they travel on their daily commute. In an editorial-style paper entitled The Mirage of $10-a-Day Childcare: Affordability Without Access, Bardell outlines how the expansion of Quebec’s $10 per-day childcare plan into a federally-mandated universal childcare program remains, for many families, an illusion.
The third-year Victoria College student is pursuing both a Major in Economics and a Major in Ethics, Society and Law. It’s a pairing of programs that will give the Belleville native, who is considering law school as a next step, a healthy background in policy creation, as well as the research methodologies for testing and evidencing the efficacy of social programs that result from policy decisions. She has already started applying the critical lenses she is learning about to the world around her.
“I have a young niece and a niece and nephew, so I was just interested in the space,” Bardell explained. “I’d been seeing the $10‑a‑day headlines in the papers, but then I was hearing more anecdotally about problems with long waitlists. And when I started to look into that, there was just a lot of research available, so it seemed like a good space to get to know more about!” [Read more…]