LUMS Students Shine at the 9th Annual SAESM in Nepal

A contingent of LUMS Economics students along with two LUMS faculty members, Dr. Ali Hasanain and Dr. Turab Hussain, attended the 9th Annual South Asian Economics Students Meet (SAESM), in Kathmandu, Nepal from December 17-22, 2012. The conference was themed “Towards a Greener South Asia” and all the papers were directed towards similar sub-categories.

The SAESM was sponsored by the World Bank and was opened by Dr. Yuba Raj Khatiwada, Governor, Central Bank of Nepal on December 17, 2012.

This year, the Pakistani student delegation was fairly diverse, with students from the Lahore School of Economics (LSE) as well as from Institute of Business Administration (IBA) and SZABIST in Karachi.

The delegation also met the Nepali President, Dr.

Ram Baran Yadav. The students sat through a highly informative plenary session which had Dr. A K Enamul Haque from Bangladesh and Dr. DK Narayanan from India on the panel.

There were four competitions on the Meet. Kanza Azeemi from LUMS was selected from Pakistan to discuss climate change in the World Bank Blogging Competition – her blog will soon feature on the World Bank website. In the Budding Economist Competition, Raahema Arif Siddiqui (LUMS) and Sadia Hussain (LSE) were two finalists, out of a total of five.

Amongst the six categories under which each country sent a paper, two were won by Pakistani students. Osama Safeer’s paper on Game Theoretical Analysis of Climate Change Mitigation and Kanza Azeemi’s paper on a Behavioural Perspective on Energy-Efficient Light Adoption were winners in their respective categories.

The other four papers were high quality as well and ranked amongst the best. Pakistani team also performed competitively in the Economics Quiz Competition.

The Meet majorly took place at Nagarkot, a beautiful place in the lap of Himalayas, and included trip to the historical royal city of Bhaktapur. Pakistani students stayed back after the meet to have a go at Rafting and Mountain Biking near the Tibet border.

All the students were good ambassadors of the country and have made friendships with Indians, Nepalis, Srilankans, Bhutanis and Bangladeshis that will surely last long.