About

HPEC is organized by the Harvard Undergraduate Economics Association — an undergraduate student organization, not Harvard University institutionally — and has been held most years since 2011, with participation from US, Canadian, and international teams. Registration is limited by space and fills quickly; the 2026 competition is held in-person only on April 18. The format opens with an individual written round of 60 multiple-choice questions covering micro and macroeconomics in 90 minutes, which determines team seeding. Teams of four then compete in quiz bowl rounds — 15-minute round-robin sessions of 15 questions each, followed by single-elimination rounds of 18 questions — with the top 16 teams from the seeding round advancing to brackets. The top-scoring team and the two highest individual scorers receive trophies; there are no cash prizes. In addition to competition rounds, participants attend panels and presentations from Harvard economics faculty, graduate students, and practitioners.

The honest picture of HPEC is more useful than the inflated one. With a field of 20–40 teams and trophies as the sole prizes, the admissions credential it produces is modest — winning HPEC is not the same signal as placing in the National Economics Challenge or the International Economics Olympiad. What HPEC genuinely offers is a well-organized, AP-level economics tournament in a Harvard setting with real access to faculty and practitioners, good preparation for the AP Economics exams, and a competitive experience for students who want to test their economics knowledge against a motivated peer group. For an economics-interested student in the Northeast who can reach Cambridge, it is a worthwhile day of competition. For a student evaluating their options nationally, the NEC or IEO represent stronger credential opportunities in the same discipline.

HPEC is the right competition for a high school student with serious economics interest who wants a rigorous tournament experience at AP level — the field is selective enough to be meaningful and the Harvard setting provides genuine educational value, but the credential it produces should be understood for what it is.