Announcement of the results of the NBS Governor’s Award

On 11 January 2019 the NBS Governor, Jozef Makúch, awarded the NBS Governor’s Award for outstanding dissertations or doctoral theses in economics to the authors of three dissertations completed in 2018.

The first prize of €1,500 was awarded to Dr Marek Rusnák for a dissertation entitled “Essays on monetary policy transmission”. The second prize of €1,000 went to Dr Martin Kameník for a dissertation entitled “Fiscal rules, fiscal space, and procyclical fiscal policy”. The third prize of €500 was awarded to Dr Miroslav Kľúčik for a dissertation entitled “Leading indicator models for the Slovak Republic – the application of empirical and theoretical approaches”.

In his address to the awardees, Governor Makúch noted the rising quality of entries: “With each edition of the award, the entries are improving. From the perspective of both Slovak economic science and the quality of our economic policy, it is encouraging to see a generation of high-quality young economists coming through.“

Dr Rusnák is a graduate of the Institute of Economic Studies at Charles University in Prague. He is currently working at the European Central Bank as a financial stability expert. His dissertation, “Essays on monetary policy transmission”, consists of five articles, all of which have been published in reputable scientific journals. The first article shows that many models of the short-term effect of monetary policy on the price level are poorly specified, and it points out the most common errors. The second article uses meta-analysis to examine the empirical literature on lags in the impact of monetary policy. It finds that the average time required for monetary policy to achieve its full impact is two and a half years. The third article looks at the heterogeneity of estimates of consumer habit formation. The fourth article presents a dynamic factor model for estimating Czech GDP in real time. The results show that external indicators are more important for the accuracy of the model than are economic sentiment indicators and variables describing the financial market. The fifth and last article shows that Czech GDP revisions are relatively large and may to some extent be estimated in advance.

Dr Kameník graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the Technical University of Košice. His dissertation provides an analysis of fiscal policies in EU countries. Using a dynamic panel estimation and structural VAR model, he examines fiscal policy cyclicality. His study shows that fiscal rules do not have a significant effect on the cyclicality of overall government expenditure. On the other hand, where high-quality fiscal rules are present, government investment and consumption are found to be countercylical. Fiscal rules are more robust where fiscal space is limited.

Dr Kľúčik earned his doctorate at the Faculty of Economics at the Technical University of Ostrava. He currently works in Slovakia as an analyst at the Office of the Council for Budget Responsibility. His dissertation examined leading indicators for Slovakia and involved creating a structural VAR model to estimate Slovak GDP. Compared with alternative models, his model produced the most accurate and least skewed projections. The study demonstrates that economic fluctuations have been largely caused by supply side shocks.

This NBS Governor’s Award was the sixth edition of the competition and was open to dissertations and doctoral theses completed in the 2017/2018 academic year either at universities in Slovakia or by Slovak citizens studying abroad. The award attracted a total of seventeen entrants, and the entries included thirteen dissertations and four doctoral theses. These outstanding and original contributions to the field of economic research addressed mainly topics in the areas of monetary economics, macroeconomics, financial economics, and financial stability. The entries were judged by an expert jury made up of representatives of the academic community and Národná banka Slovenska.

Martina Vráblik Solčányiová
NBS Spokesperson

National Bank of Slovakia
Communications Section
Imricha Karvasa 1, 813 25 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Tel.: +421-2-5787 2142, +421-2-5865 2142, +421-2-5787 2169, +421-2-5865 2169
Internet: http://www.nbs.sk

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