A springboard to careers in academia for many promising contestants, this year’s Student Research Paper Competition has announced as many as 13 winners – students and graduates of ICEF.
And the winners are…
Category “Best Research Paper in Finance – 2020 Masters Students and Graduates (BSc and MSc)”:
1st place – 'Investigation of the European Banks’ Coco bonds pricing'
Author: Anna Pechurina (BSc holder)
Research supervisor: Vladimir Sokolov
2nd place – ‘Effect of board of directors social network structure on companies innovation performance’
Author: Natalia Shavaleeva (MSc holder)
Research supervisor: Maria Kokoreva
Laureates:
Philip Permiakov (BSc holder), research paper "Efficiency of the bitcoin options market", supervised by Vladimir Sokolov
Kirill Panikarovskikh (MSc holder), research paper ‘Influence of anchoring effect on probability of FPO and PostFPO efficiency: behavioural signalling approach’, supervised by Anastasia Stepanova
Category "Best Research Work in Economics – 2020 Masters Students and Graduates":
1st place –'Military Service and Economic Outcomes of Conscripts. Russian Evidence'
Author: Nikita German (MSc holder)
Research supervisor: Sofya Budanova
3rd place – “Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs in the News Markets”
Author: Daniil Tsinman (BSc holder)
Research supervisor: Tatiana Mayskaya
Laureates:
Anastasia Ruszczyk (BSc holder), research paper 'The effect of production complementarities on public good provision', supervised by Steven Kivinen
Alexandra Pripadcheva (second-year bachelor'’ student), research paper 'The bias of the jurors in small towns', supervised by Steven Kivinen
Category "Best Research Work in Finance – Bachelors Students”:
1st place – research paper 'Firm-specific financial characteristics and predictability of investors’ response to its market news'
Co-authors: Evgeny Grigorenko (3-year student), Andrey Voronin (3rd-year student)
Research supervisor: Piotr Lukyanchenko
2nd place – 'Informed speculative trades in the cryptocurrency markets'
Author: Grigory Kuzmin (4-year student)
Research supervisor: Alexey Boulatov
3rd place – 'Application of modern econometric models towards managing market risk in banking'
Author: Alexey Kipriianov (4-year student)
Research supervisor: Daniil Esaulov
Laureate:
Kamila Shafigullina (4-year student), research paper "The Effect of Concentration of Ownership on Corporate Capital Structure,” supervised by Maria Kokoreva
About SRPC
First held in 2003, the Student Research Paper Competition opened its doors to all HSE majors in 2018. Eligible for participation are also former students, as well as schools all over Russia and abroad.
The 2020 Competition was conducted entirely online and spanned 23 sections including Life Sciences.
Contestants in each section were grouped into two categories, one including bachelors students and the other masters students and graduates of 2020 (BSc and MSc). Papers evaluation is anonymous and conducted by experts in each section. Students and graduates of ICEF usually compete, and win, in “Economics” and “Finance”.
Each paper is evaluated by a team of two experts. In the event they fail to come to an agreement, a third expert is invited, the Competition Board. Its members can be later asked to provide comments to contestants’ articles that are planned for publication in scientific journals.
Why compete?
In addition to Competition Certificates, winners and laureates receive extra points that can put them ahead of competition for places on some of HSE master’s programmes, as well as points that make them eligible for increased state academic scholarship or financial support for traveling to scientific events around the world.
Winners and laureate often have their papers published in the Russian or international journals or present them at reputable international conferences.
Feedback from experts: Vladimir Sokolov, PhD, Associate Professor at ICEF
This year’s Competition gave awards to two papers I was a supervisor of – one by Anna Pechurina, ICEF bachelors student of the class of 2020, and the other by Philip Permyakov. Anna won the first place in “Finance” and Philip became a laureate in that same section.
In addition to research supervision, I have the duties of an expert. I review and evaluate the submissions. Our selection and evaluation procedure prescribes that every paper is reviewed by two experts of two different faculties so as to avoid conflict of interests. Once the paper has been graded by each expert, it is submitted to the Competition Board.
The papers I received for evaluation were written by contestants majoring in fields other than finance and economics, and I can see there has been a major increase in their quality in recent years. This is particularly due to the competition – it has become tougher in response to the overall increase of the Competition’s prestige. Relevant, attention-catching topic is no longer sufficient, and nearly all submissions we receive have competently articulated contents and novelty, which makes their authors and the Competition itself interesting to follow for the academic world.
Inviting students to compete can be a good way to spur their interest and motivation in pursuing topics that are relevant and exciting to explore. Along with many other benefits, the Competition gives them opportunities to continue education.
Philip Permyakov, for instance, was among the last year’s winners in Finance. In the current year 2020 he enrolled in a master's programme at London Business School – not least due to his win as a bachelors student, which gave the portfolio he submitted to the British admissions some extra points. In Philip’s case, the Competition paved the way for pursuing a degree at LBS.
As a Competition Expert, I can’t but mention the high number of ICEF students and graduates among winners. Some continue to succeed year on year: Anastasia Ruszczyk, currently a student of The London School of Economics, won the first place last year as a bachelors student and became this year’s winner as a graduate. Another absolute winner, in Economics, Nikita German, had his first win in 2018.
This shows that ICEF generally maintains a high standard of student research work, and not the least role is played here by ICEF Academia programme. Students who approach me to become their research supervisor understand the seriousness of standards to be met by their papers, particularly, term papers and theses.
Students who produced strong research papers didn’t conceive them as submissions to the Competition. They wrote them guided by the long-established academic standards of ICEF
Alongside this, there is high faculty involvement in encouraging student research at ICEF, including in terms of preparations for the Competition. Choice of topic is just one of the many issues our research supervisors assist students in. Anna Pechurina, who won the first place in this year’s Competition in Finance, said she was willing to focus on banking, so I helped her choose the topic she has coped with excellently. Philip Permyakov knew from the start he wanted to explore the bitcoin options market. My role as his supervisor was to bring his paper to the level of a scientifically valuable work.
