Abigail Knowles wins Central Bank research competition

Abigail Knowles wins Central Bank research competition
The Central Bank of The Bahamas.

NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The Central Bank has announced the winner of this year’s T. Baswell Donaldson Research Competition as Abigail Knowles of the State University of New York.

The independent panel of judges (the Assessment Committee) recommended the prize of $20,000 be awarded to Knowles for her paper “Fiscal First Aid: Returning to a Sustainable Debt Trajectory”.

Abigail Knowles

The panel also sought to recognize a research paper with the most significant potential and offered an Honourable Mention award of $5,000 (five thousand dollars) to Marc-Anthony Rolle for his paper “Case Study: an examination of the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the marketing strategies of retail businesses in Downtown Nassau, Bahamas”.

This year the Central Bank received some thirty-nine research submissions for the T. Baswell Memorial Prize, with the submissions reviewed and adjudicated by a panel of economists and university economic lecturers. The Award is only given if the Assessment Committee deems that an entry meets the epitome of academic rigor expected of university-level research and the relevance criteria for the Bahamian economy. The Committee also recognized that a number of the research papers showed considerable promise, with the aforementioned entry rising to the required standard that would merit the award of the ultimate prize.

The Central Bank encourages students to continue to improve their research techniques and methods, and to take full advantage of the support of faculty advisors and peers to refine their work. The Bank has begun to prepare for the 2023 T Baswell Donaldson Research Competition and will expand its initiative to identify prize recipients.

The T Baswell Memorial Prize is aimed at recognizing Bahamian university students who produced outstanding research on topics of policy or other applied relevance to the Bahamian economy. The research must satisfy rigorous academic standards and focus on business, economics, finance, banking, or other related subjects, of relevance to the Bahamian economy.