Awards for five master’s and two doctoral dissertations

This year once again Banka Slovenije has awarded prizes for the best dissertations by students in the field of finance. Out of 19 dissertations applying, the selection committee chose the five best master’s and two best doctoral dissertations. Prizes of EUR 1,500 for master’s dissertations were presented to Enia Bearzotti, Vida Maver, Rok Mlakar, Martin Pezdir and Polona Zorko, and prizes of EUR 3,000 each for doctoral dissertations were presented to Gašper Ploj and Ursula Slapnik.

Banka Slovenije has been awarding prizes since 1992, and in this way we promote research work. Including this year’s winners, around 300 students have now won prizes. The latest winners were congratulated by the Governor of Banka Slovenije, Boštjan Vasle, who also took the opportunity to thank them for their contribution to economic knowledge: “At Banka Slovenije we seek good and scientifically underpinned ideas that might help us shape our future decisions. For this reason our door is always open to individuals like you."

Recipients of this year’s prizes:

Enia Bearzotti, mag. ekon. ved, for the dissertation ESG Integration in Portfolio Construction: An Empirical Study Of European Stocks, under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr Igor Lončarski, of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana.

Vida Maver, mag. ekon. ved, for the dissertation Inflation forecasting driven by inflation expectations: A dynamic multi-factor model, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Igor Masten, of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana.

Rok Mlakar, mag. ekon. ved, for the dissertation Macroeconomic drivers of the yield curve, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Igor Masten, of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana.

Martin Pezdir, mag. fin. mat., for the dissertation Calculation of price indices with machine learning for automatic product classification, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Ljupčo Todorovski, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Ljubljana.

Polona Zorko, mag. posl. ved, for the dissertation European banks' response to new liquidity risk regulation in banks following the financial crisis, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Marko Košak, School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana.

Gašper Ploj, Doctor of Economics, for the dissertation Three Essays on the Interconnectedness of Labor Markets and Household Finance, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Moritz Kuhn, Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultät, University of Bonn.

Ursula Slapnik, Doctor of Science, for the dissertation Textual sentiment in sovereign credit rating reports, under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr Igor Lončarski, of the School of Economics and Business of the University of Ljubljana.