ANDREA COMAS
Kiran Stacey is the FT's political correspondent
Wanted: a plan for the painless death of the euro. The reward: a quarter of a million - sterling, of course.
Those in need of spare cash amid troubled economic times could do worse than apply for a new prize set up by Britain's Lord Wolfson, who is offering £250,000 to the person who comes up with the best plan for winding up the euro in an orderly way.
The Wolfson Economics Prize will be the second largest cash prize to an academic economist after the Nobel Prize.
Lord Wolfson, chief executive of Next and a donor to the British Conservative party, said: "The prize will help answer some of the many important - yet unanswered - questions from over a decade ago when the monetary union was first set up.
"While there has been a lot of speculation about countries leaving the euro, there has been too little detailed research on the many complex questions this would raise."
The prize was necessary, he added, because governments could not openly debate contingency plans for the end of the single currency. "It would be seen as a white flag and could itself trigger a collapse of the euro," he said.
Policy Exchange, a think-tank, will now send a pack to 200 of the world's top economics departments, with details of how to apply. The organizers hope to tempt thinkers of the calibre of the Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and Chris Pissarides.
Daniel Finkelstein, chairman of Policy Exchange, said: "We are interested not only in the subject matter itself but also in prizes. We are trying to make sure the people with the best solutions to this crisis find us."
Lord Wolfson admitted the prize -- coming from a non-euro zone country and soliciting ways to break up the currency bloc - could be received badly in Europe. But he insisted he wanted the euro to continue: "I don't want the euro to collapse. If it could be avoided that would be the best possible outcome. Like everyone in Europe, I hope it can muddle through."
The organizers are giving entrants until the end of January, 2012 to formulate their plans, and want experts to take into account the full legal, economic and political ramifications of their solutions.
But Lord Wolfson said there was a possibility that there would be no plan at the end of the process. "That in itself would be quite revealing," he said.