The largest academic society at LSE
The LSESU Economics Society is the largest and most influential academic society at the London School of Economics — and the only one operating with the exclusive support of the LSE Department of Economics. It convenes 800+ active members from across the LSE programme map, runs a peer-reviewed journal, hosts Nobel laureates in its flagship seminar series, and runs the Economics Essay Competition annually since 2017.
The Society sits within the wider London School of Economics ecosystem and is registered through the LSE Students’ Union. Two crest variants — the red wordmark and the hexagonal mark — are both official.
Founded as the student voice of LSE economics
The LSESU Economics Society exists for one purpose: to be the student-led counterpart to one of the most influential economics faculties in the world. It serves as the bridge between the LSE Department of Economics and the wider student body — and, increasingly, the wider international high-school community through the Essay Competition.
The only academic society at LSE that operates with the exclusive support of the LSE Department of Economics.— LSESU Economics Society constitution
Membership exceeds 800 active students drawn from LSE undergraduates, postgraduates, and exchange scholars. Activities run year-round: weekly seminars, an academic publication, policy debate evenings, and visiting-speaker programmes that have drawn Nobel laureates and finance-ministry alumni to the Houghton Street campus.
The Essay Competition — the academic writing competition this site supports — is the Society’s longest-running outward-facing programme. Launched in 2017, it has drawn submissions from more than sixty countries and is now one of the most respected pre-university economics writing competitions in the UK and internationally.
The Society’s membership cuts across the LSE programme map. Roughly half of active members are reading the BSc Economics or the BSc Econometrics & Mathematical Economics; the remainder draw from BSc Finance, the MSc Economics streams, the MPA Economic Policy, and exchange-year students from peer institutions in Europe, Asia, and North America. That cross-section is the academic backdrop the Essay Competition tests against — not a single-track syllabus but the working consensus of LSE’s economics teaching across degrees.
Rationale · peer-reviewed
A student-edited but rigorously refereed journal of original economic analysis, policy commentary, and book reviews. Its editorial standard is the closest thing in the student world to a graduate-level publication — and it sets the writing register the Essay Competition rubric calibrates against.
Contributors are LSE students whose submissions are vetted in a blind process: identifying information is stripped before review, and reviewers — drawn from senior students and faculty advisers — assess each paper purely on its analytical merit, not its provenance.
For Essay Competition candidates, the journal is more than an accolade. It is a window onto the kind of analytical writing — clear, evidence-led, mathematically literate — that the LSE undergraduate programme expects from its first-year cohort, and that the Essay Competition’s 100-point rubric is calibrated to identify in 1500 words.
Where Nobel laureates speak to students
Named in honour of Amartya Sen, the Sen Club seminar series is the Society’s most distinctive academic offering: small, off-the-record discussions with Nobel-tier economists about the foundations and frontiers of the discipline.
Amartya Sen
For his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory. The Sen Club takes its name from his enduring influence on economic ethics and capability theory.
Eric Maskin
For laying the foundations of mechanism design theory — the framework that underlies modern auctions, matching markets, and incentive contracts.
Oliver Hart
For his work on contract theory — exploring how incomplete contracts shape firm boundaries, corporate governance, and the structure of modern organisations.
The Sen Club is one of the few student-run seminars in the UK where Nobel laureates speak alongside doctoral candidates and undergraduates as conversational equals. The format is small, the questions are technical, and the discussion never strays into ceremony. The 2026 Essay Competition includes a Question 1 set by Sir Christopher Pissarides — 2010 Nobel laureate — who has himself been a Sen Club guest, so the seminar series and the Essay Competition share a continuous intellectual lineage.
For high-school candidates, the value of the Sen Club is indirect but real. The same academics who attend or speak at these sessions are the ones who set Essay Competition prompts, judge the top tier, and sign the certificates that travel onto university applications. Reading the published work of any Sen Club speaker — Sen’s The Idea of Justice, Maskin’s mechanism-design surveys, Hart’s contract-theory essays — is one of the most efficient ways for a candidate to internalise the kind of analytical voice the rubric rewards.
Nine consecutive seasons, sixty-plus countries
Launched in 2017 as the Society’s first programme aimed at pre-university students. Operational support from ASEEDER; academic content held exclusively by serving LSE Economics Department professors who set, judge, and sign every awarded essay.
LSE-set prompts
Every question set by a serving LSE Economics Department professor — never delegated to a contractor.
1500-word ceiling
A hard cap that rewards precision over coverage. Length is not virtue; argument density is.
English-only
Submissions in English. The medium matches LSE’s working language and university admissions context.
Free entry
No entry fee, no premium tier, no sign-up. Every candidate competes against the full pool of submissions.
Blind double-marking
Two independent senior assessors per essay, with prompt-setter moderation at the top tier.
No participation certs
Awards reserved for genuine distinction — keeps the credential meaningful on university applications.
How we verify what we publish
This site publishes facts about the LSESU Economics Society Essay Competition. Every claim on every page of this international portal is verifiable against the official primary sources listed below; where this site and the primary source disagree, the primary source governs and we correct the discrepancy within one working day of being notified.
Primary source · LSESU EconSoc Essay site
Society identity, journal status, Sen Club history, Symposium programme, Essay Competition prompt release, deadlines, and rubric.
lsesuesec.org →Primary source · LSESU EconSoc home
Society constitution, exec elections, the broader competitions programme, and event calendar.
lsesueconsoc.org →Operational partner · ASEEDER
Submission support via the WhatsApp link, AI and plagiarism screening, candidate-side support, and the Chinese-language sibling site at lseec.org.cn.
lseec.org.cn (zh-CN) →University of Cambridge
Independent institution; the High Distinction tier earns eligibility for a Cambridge economics programme. Programme details are confirmed to awardees separately.
cam.ac.uk →Corrections policy. If you find a factual error on this site, contact us via the WhatsApp channel on the Contact page and we will verify against the primary sources above and correct within one working day, dated and noted in the page footer where material.
Authorship. All public-facing content on this site is reviewed by the ASEEDER editorial team in consultation with the LSESU Economics Society. No content is generated automatically without human verification against a primary source.
Questions about the Society?
Reach our international support team via WhatsApp. We can confirm eligibility, explain the Essay Competition rubric, share the submission link, and connect you with the right preparation resources — in Mandarin or English, with a response within one working day.
