No student has deserved the Hanžeković Award this year

The annual award of the Marijan Hanžeković Foundation for 2012 in the category of regular papers was today awarded to Mirna Dumčić and Tomislav Ridzak from the Croatian National Bank (HNB) for their work analyzing what determines the difference in the price at which banks in Central and Eastern Europe acquire and place funds, while the award in the student category was not awarded due to insufficient quality of the submitted works.

The monetary award of 50,000 kuna, diploma, and medal were given to Dumčić and Ridzak for their work “Determinants of Banks’ Net Interest Margins in Central and Eastern Europe,” which will also be published in the scientific journal Financial Theory and Practice at the beginning of 2013, published by the Institute of Public Finance (IJF).

According to the director of IJF and the manager of the Foundation, Katarina Ott, this work offers a valuable contribution to economic science as topics related to the banking industry in Central and Eastern Europe have mostly been studied in earlier phases of transition, that is, when large banks were entering the market, but not after the onset of the crisis.

The awarded work is based on the study of a large number of banks from the region during the period from 1999 to 2010, and it proves that until the onset of the crisis, the difference in the price at which banks acquired and placed funds decreased, due to high inflows of money and the stability of the macroeconomic environment, while after the crisis, from 2008, it increased.

This year, 16 papers were submitted for the annual awards of the Hanžeković Foundation in the category of regular awards, and besides the awarded one, Ott said, there are several other valuable papers among them, which will also be published in the journal Financial Theory and Practice.

For the student category award, four papers were submitted, but the award committee unanimously decided that due to insufficient quality, the award would not be given this year, Ott said, while inviting the present professors from the Faculty of Economics to encourage students to research and write papers.

Ott also pointed out the fact that in 13 years of awarding these prizes, only three papers were not related to the Croatian National Bank, whether the authors were its employees or they got employed there after receiving the student award.

Prof. Dr. Marijan Hanžeković was a respected and well-known Croatian economist – financier, and among other things, the first Minister of Finance of the Republic of Croatia. The foundation that bears his name was established in 1998, and its goal is to promote financial science and encourage scientists and professionals, especially young ones, to engage in this discipline.