THE PANEL of top European economists who will judge the £250,000 Wolfson Prize entries was unveiled today. 
 
 The prize, sponsored by Next chief executive Lord Simon Wolfson (pictured, right), will award a quarter of a million pounds to the economist who offers the best feasible plan that a country could follow if it wanted to leave the Eurozone. 
 
 Announced last month, the prize has already received more than 600 expressions of interest from universities, ex-governmental advisers and economic institutions. 
 
 Tony Blair’s former economic adviser Derek Scott chairs the judging panel. 
 
 “The Eurozone crisis is the biggest threat to global economic stability since the Second World War,” he said. 
 
 “European leaders may now be coming to appreciate the scale of the Eurozone crisis, but this prize is a private sector initiative to reinforce the response of policy makers in the decisions that will have to be made to get Europe out of the mess.” 
 
 Wolfson explained that the scale of the Eurozone crisis meant a major private sector incentive was needed to attract the highest calibre of economists to tackle the question. 
 
 DEREK SCOTT | VESTRA WEALTH 
 
 An adviser to Tony Blair from 1997 to 2003, Scott is now a visiting professor at Cass Business School, an economic adviser to Vestra Wealth and author of “Off Whitehall,” on the economics of EMU. 
 
 JEAN JACQUES ROSA |SCIENCES PO 
 
 Rosa is an economist and professor at Sciences Po in Paris. A former member of then-French PM Lionel Jospin’s economic council in the 1990s, he is now a member of the America Economic Association. 
 
 MANFRED NEUMANN | UNI OF BONN 
 
 Professor Neumann works at both the Deutsche Bundesbank and the University of Bonn. He co-founded the international Konstanz Seminar on Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy. 
 
 CHARLES GOODHART | LSE 
 
 Goodhart is the emeritus professor of banking and finance with the financial markets group at the London School of Economics. From 1997 to 2000 he was a member of the Bank of England’s MPC. 
 
 FRANCESCO GIAVAZZI|UNI BOCCONI 
 
 Professor of economics at Bocconi University in Milan, Giavazzi was a member of the group of economic advisers to the President of the European Commission from 2000 to 2010. ||||| Simon Wolfson, Next CEO and Tory peer, has offered £250,000 for an economist who can solve the eurozone's problems | PA 
 
 Simon Wolfson, the Conservative peer, has created a £250,000 prize for any economist who can find “an orderly unwinding of the euro”. 
 
 Writing in the Times, Wolfson, who is also the chief executive of the Next clothing chain, said that an unplanned collapse of the single currency area would “endanger the stability of the banking system, along with the savings and jobs of millions”. 
 
 Saying that he still holds out hope the eurozone’s problems could be resolved, Wolfson believes “the odds are stacked against it” and a “Plan B” is needed. 
 
 The ongoing debt crisis in the eurozone, which many in the markets believe is rolling towards an endgame over the next few weeks, has led to speculation that the single currency region cannot function in its current form, and must either come up with new institutions and new mechanisms to enforce fiscal discipline amongst its member states, or it must fragment. 
 
 The right wing think tank, Policy Exchange, will administer the prize. 
 
 ||||| A CONSERVATIVE PEER and the chief executive of the retail chain Next wants to give you a €300,000 ($400,000) prize. And there’s an apparently simple way to win it: can you figure out how best to let a country leave the euro? 
 
 Simon Wolfson has donated £250,000 to the ‘Wolfson Economics Prize’, being run by the not-for-profit London-based Policy Exchange. 
 
 Its quandry is relatively simple: it simply asks for submissions on how to manage the orderly exit of one, or more, member states from the European Monetary Union. 
 
 One of the major stumbling blocks faced by the single currency, in the midst of the ongoing European debt crisis, is how to leave it – a circumstance never imagined when it was being first conceived. 
 
 Though the 1992 Maastricht Treaty outlined specific criteria that countries had to meet if they wanted to join the euro, it never outlined how a country could leave it – meaning there is no ‘formula’ for states to follow if they want to revert back to their old currencies. 
 
 Wolfson’s challenge is to come up with a system that allows for countries to leave the currency in an orderly way, with the minimal impact and disruption either to their own countries or to the others left in the Euro. 
 
 The project is targeted at top academics and economists from around the world, but is open to entry by anyone who is interested – and with a prize of £250,000, it could well attract significant worldwide interest. 
 
 “There is now a real possibility that political or economic pressure may force one or more states to leave the euro. If this process is mismanaged it could threaten European savings, employment and the stability of the international banking system,” Wolfson said. 
 
 This prize aims to ensure that high quality economic thought is given to how the euro might be restructured into more stable currencies. 
 
 The winning submission will be asked to consider what a post-euro Eurozone would be like, how to manage the transition between the current situation and live after the euro, and how employment, savings and debts would be treated. 
 
 The one-off prize is will be the world’s second-biggest economics cash prize in 2012, second only to the Nobel Prize. The deadline for submissions is January 31. 
 
 Entry criteria can be found at the Policy Exchange website. 
 
 This story originally appeared at TheJournal.ie 
 
 This article originally appeared at Business ETC. Copyright 2011.
– Econ majors, dust off those textbooks. If you can come up with the best way to help the euro zone through its current mess by the end of January, you earn $400,000. That's the reward being offered by British CEO Simon Wolfson as part of the Wolfson Economics Prize, reports Business Insider. More specifically, you have to spell out how one or more countries might leave the euro in orderly fashion. The contest is aimed at top-notch academics and economists but open to all. More details here. Or click here to see the judges you'll need to schmooze.