Graduate Spotlight: Tayssir Benchoubane
Hear from Tayssir Benchoubane, recent graduate who double majored in Economics and Political Science on his post-graduation plans, the importance of research and what he has learned from the program!
Following my economics degree at Carleton, I’ll be heading to law school! I’m hoping to specialize in litigation, particularly relating to antitrust and competition law. The rigorous economic analysis techniques that I was taught allowed me to delve into the world of industrial organization in my final year of studies. Thanks to the mentorship of our department’s professors, I successfully documented anticompetitive market structures as well as predatory pricing strategies in key Canadian economic sectors. I feel as though to translate findings such as these into actionable remedies, I will need to pursue legal studies.
My thinking is that this will hopefully allow me to tackle anti-consumer practices from multiple angles; that is, understanding the market dynamics through an economic lens while wielding the legal tools to actually do something about them. For me, the privilege of having developed these analytical and research methods comes with the responsibility to use them in service of a fairer economy with strong consumer protections.
The economics program fundamentally changed how I approach complex problems; it teaches you to dig beneath surface-level observations and construct arguments grounded in empirical evidence through data science. I learnt to do this by wrestling with massive datasets, decoding stochastic patterns, and figuring out how to tell coherent stories from what initially looks like chaos. The program teaches you that you can’t just point to a correlation and call it a day; you have to build a case that can—in a perfect scenario—withstand scrutiny from people who know the data as well as you do. This type of research requires both analytical rigor and, most importantly, the ability to effectively communicate your findings to people who don’t necessarily share your obsession with a topic.
If you’re considering getting involved in research, my advice is simple: start before you feel ready and pick something that genuinely bothers you about the world. I chose to investigate grocery pricing because I was frustrated by how much my groceries cost, and that personal motivation carried me through months of tedious data cleaning and debugging code that refused to cooperate. The technical skills matter, but what really determines whether you’ll stick with a project is whether you actually care about the answer to your question. Don’t wait for the perfect research opportunity or until you’ve mastered every statistical method—jump in, make mistakes, and learn as you go. You’ll see there’s something deeply satisfying about moving from “I wonder why this happens” to “I can show you exactly why this happens, and here’s what we should do about it!”