The HSE Student Research Paper Competition 2023 (SRPC 2023) has announced its results. Among prize winners in the Finance category is Natalia Korsik, a graduate of ICEF’s International Bachelor’s Programme in Economics and Finance.
Natalia’s paper Impact of Bank License Withdrawals on Firms' Procurement Tender Outcomes was announced second best in the category Best Finance Research Paper by Master’s Students or Graduates 2023.
Natalia Korsik is 22 and graduated from the ICEF International Bachelor’s Programme in Economics and Finance with honours in 2023. Here’s Natalia’s experience at ICEF, how she joined the HSE student paper competition, and how she sees her future.
It doesn’t matter how many competitors one has. One must always do one’s utmost
Natalia’s decision to join the HSE SRPC 2023 was inspired by her research supervisor Vladimir Sokolov, Associate Professor of ICEF and Head of International Laboratory of Financial Economics. Natalia did not know about this competition until she joined it. Nor is she aware of how many competitors she had in it.
It didn’t take Vladimir Sokolov a big effort to convince his student to apply. Natalia’s motivation to excel at whatever she does can only be admired, she’s a student to look up to. And her enthusiasm has yielded fruit: Natalia boasts three diplomas with honors – one from high school and two from the Higher School of Economics and the University of London, the latter a First Class Honours degree.
Natalia Korsik: “As a high school student, I got attracted to ICEF because it offers solid education in economics that builds on a blend of Western and Russian experience. Add to this the possibility to earn a diploma from the University of London, and the perspectives are more than wide.
Although ICEF is reputedly a challenging school to study at, I found it easy to enroll and be its student. It means I made the right choice of major.”
Natalia smiles when she says, “I know I was the lucky one who had it easy here. But it wasn’t solely because of my talents, there’s a tremendous amount of work behind my excellent performance.”
She continues: “If I hadn’t studied as hard as I did at school, I wouldn’t have gained that strong competitive advantage as an applicant. Everyone has to work hard at ICEF, true, but it’s fair play, and unless you give it one hundred and ten percent, you are unlikely to graduate.”
Natalia likes to study and her attitude to learning has been that of a highly responsible student: “Even a minor gap, be it due to undone homework or a missed topic, can result in students’ failing to grasp further concepts. So I took a proactive role in my learning.”
A small but important detail: in her account of what kept her motivated as a student Natalia uses economic terminology:
“One of the problems explored in economics is information asymmetry. From its perspective, a diploma with honours can be viewed as a signal to the labor market of the “quality” of the diploma holder. Given the amount of effort and energy I was putting in to progress as good as I did, it was only natural to want official acknowledgement.”
Winner’s secret: a more optimal way to cross the street
Natalia Korsik thinks the most valuable thing one can gain from ICEF is self-reliance: “The only thing you can rely on here is your knowledge and aptitudes. At the same time, you can expect to be provided with everything needed for productive studies. ICEF offers an empowering learning environment. The teachers expect you to work hard, but they also deliver the material in such a way that learning things like discounted cash flows and balance sheet feels nothing but pleasure. What is more, ICEF changes your very perception – to an ICEF student who is about to cross the street, the crosswalk is a triangle with legs and hypotenuse and the most optimal way to cross is diagonally.”
There were two things that had led Natalia to join HSE Student Research Paper Competition. First, her personal interest, for SRPC is exactly where contestants can experience corporate finance at work and test the knowledge they have gained at ICEF. Second, the aptly chosen theme. Natalia followed her teachers’ advice and approached the choice of research topic very competently by identifying some of the “white spots”, i.e. areas with little empirical data and poorly explored themes:
“I used parsing technique to collect the data for my paper - Impact of Bank License Withdrawals on Firms' Procurement Tender Outcomes. It involved sourcing data from websites and registers using the code I wrote for it. Processing that data in RStudio was a time-consuming process but it greatly levelled up my programming skills.”
Natalia says she was lucky to have Vladimir Sokolov as her research supervisor: “Professor Sokolov allowed me to follow my optimal work pace, guiding me at every step of the way and helping to get through difficult parts. It was an effort-consuming research and I am very grateful to Professor Sokolov for this experience.”
Writing that research paper has been instrumental in Natalia’s growth as a professional: “If I choose to start career in Data Science, or any other field, my experience of dealing with huge arrays of data (millions of raw data) will certainly prove useful. Economics and finance are both related to data analysis. Knowing how to program a computer to replace a comma with a full stop where required, instead of doing it manually in Excel, or how to have it reshape the data altogether, is a very useful skill.”
“My win in HSE SRPC, which is a highly competitive contest, has been an empowering experience. It has brought forth my inner confidence as personal empowerment. There are lots of powerful opportunities lying ahead.”
Congratulations on your well-deserved success, Natalia! We wish you every success in your future career.
