Dates

The rules for 2025 Canadian Economics Olympiad will be different from previous years. The following information is preliminary and may change.

We plan to open registration in mid January. Students must be registered to participate.

The Olympiad will still be conducted in two rounds: the first round (Canadian online Economics Olympiad, CoEO) will take place on March 1, 2025 between 4pm and 7pm Eastern (Toronto) time. The second round (Canadian Economics Olympiad National Finals) will be in-person and will take place on April 8, 2025. The second round will be by invitation, based on the results of the first round.

2025 International Economics Olympiad will be in Baku, Azerbaijan on July 20-29. Team Canada will participate in person. The host organization will provide the venue, local transportation, and meals. Thanks to the generous donation of our sponsors, we expect that almost all of the remaining costs (airfare and hotel accommodation) will be covered by the CEO, however, depending on the air ticket price, students may be asked to pay a small portion of the airfare. It is unlikely that such a portion will exceed $500.

There will be no Canadian Economics and Business Case Competition this year. However, there will be a mini-case competition (in late April or early May) among top Canadian Economics Olympiad participants to finalize Team Canada for the International Economics Olympiad. This competition will take only a few hours and all efforts will be made for it not to overlap with AP exams.

 

Contest Day

First (online) round : CoEO

First round will be conducted online. It will consist of multiple-choice and/or answer-only questions. It is open book contest and only final answers will be graded.

Second round: CEO National Finals

The top 10% of students who participated in the first round (but not less than 30 and not more than 45) will be invited to participate in the National Finals. 15 more students chosen by Lorvale Academy based on their selection criteria (TBA) can be added to the CEO National Finals participants.

The second round will be in person and it will be closed book. Students living in Toronto area will write it at Lorvale Academy. Students living in Vancouver area will write it at BL Educational Consulting. Students living in Ottawa and Gatineau area will write it at the University of Ottawa. We are working on securing a location in Calgary. Students living in other cities will need to arrange supervision from their school (either a teacher or administrator) or come to one of our in-person locations if feasible. While there are no participation fees for the Canadian Economics Olympiad, second-round participants may have to spend money for postage (to send their round 2 solutions by Xpresspost to the Canadian Economics Olympiad central office in Ottawa, ON) and, possibly, proctoring.

 

Content & Preparation

The contest questions draw on concepts typically covered in high-school, Advanced-Placement, and first-year-university courses on economics and finance. The questions do not derive from any specific reference resource or syllabus. All students are encouraged to participate regardless of prior economics coursework.

Students can find success using any resource(s), whether it’s class notes, Youtube playlists, an AP review book, a university textbook, MIT OCW online course material, or a MOOC, to list a few possibilities. However, for those who are unsure where to start, the following resources were popular among past CEO competitors:

From MIT OCW, courses 14.01 (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-01-principles-of-microeconomics-fall-2018/) and 14.02 (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-02-principles-of-macroeconomics-spring-2014/) would nicely complement the AP Micro and Macroeconomics material, but these lectures go beyond what you need to know for CEO and IEO. Course 14.54 (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-54-international-trade-fall-2016/) on International Trade goes way beyond what you need to know. Course 14.12 (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/14-12-economic-applications-of-game-theory-fall-2012/) is an introduction to Game Theory in the Economics context: it is a very good course but also covers much more than you will need for this Olympiad.

Recently, IEO added finance to its syllabus, so, CEO will also include financial topics such as time value of money and its application to bonds and stock valuation, CAPM and risk/return tradeoff, and investment criteria. Any undergraduate Introductory to Financial Management textbook will be sufficient. Unfortunately, there are no Undergraduate MIT OCW courses on this topic, but you can check (again, way too advanced) graduate course 15.414 (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/15-414-financial-management-summer-2003/) . Finally, some basic knowledge of International Economics and Finance (such as comparative advantage, quotes/tariffs, Purchasing Power Parity, and Interest Rate Parity) is also expected.

We also highly recommend that students review previous CEO questions on our History page. Students may also wish to review past IEO economics questions. Our exclusive education partner, Lorvale Academy, offers courses specifically designed for the CEO. Lorvale Academy has no advanced knowledge of the CEO questions and designs its courses based on topics covered in past CEO and IEO contests and on the official IEO syllabus. Some students find these courses useful as they offer a focused coverage of the required material in a single package.

 

Format & Scoring

The first round will consist of 40 Multiple-choice and “answer-only” questions.

The second round is by invitation based on the performance in the first round: it will be an in-person closed-book test and will consist of different types of questions, including Multiple Choice, answer-only, and “show your work” questions.

 

Results & Recognition

Note that information below is preliminary and may change

Based on the results of the first round, CoEO:

Students who advanced to the National Finals will be recognized as CEO National Finalists.

Based on the results of the second round, CEO National Finals:

Only marks received during the second round will be used to compute the Canadian Economics Olympiad scores. Depending on the mark distribution, gold, silver, and bronze medals, as well as CEO Honorable mention, will be awarded. Students who will receive these awards will have their names and CEO National Finals scores posted on our website; the remaining finalists will have their names (but not scores) posted in alphabetical order. While the exact distribution of the awards will depend on the realized score distribution, we plan to have 7.5% of finalists receiving gold medal award, 12.5% silver, 20% bronze, and 20% Honorable mention.

2025 Team Canada selection rules:

Canada can send 5 students to the IEO each year. The absolute winner of the CEO will automatically qualify for Team Canada. In case of a small score difference between the winner and the runner-up, the runner-up will qualify for Team Canada too. Approximately 10 top CEO National Finals participants will be invited to take part in online mini business-case competition conducted together by Canadian Economics Olympiad and Lorvale Academy to determine the remaining members of Team Canada. One more Team Canada member will be chosen based on the mini business-case results using a holistic approach. For the remaining ( 2 or 3) candidates, the weighted qualifying score W=0.75CEO+0.25BC will be computed, where CEO is a normalized CEO finals score (as a percentage of the top CEO Finals scores of students invited to the mini-case competition) and BC is a normalized mini business-case score (as a percentage of top mini business-case score). This weighted qualifying score W will be used to determine the remaining Team Canada members subject to the following 4 conditions: (1) Gender diversity: whenever possible and if it does not significantly affect the quality of the team, Team Canada should not consist of students of the same gender; (2) Geographic diversity: whenever possible and if it does not significantly affect the quality of the team, Team Canada should consist of students from at least two provinces or territories; (3) Young students clause: whenever possible and if it does not significantly affect the quality of the team, Team Canada should not have more than 2 students graduating high school in 2025 and should have at least one student graduating in 2027 or later, and (4) Continuity: whenever possible, Team Canada should include at least one past IEO Gold or Silver medalist. Note that over the entire history of the CEO, these four clauses were never binding and it is unlikely that they will be binding this year.

Past CEO results are available on our History page.