The Young Economist of 2022 Award
Prague, 25th November 2022
Each year The Czech Economic Society (CES) awards ‘The Young Economist of the Year’ award to economists under 30 years of age who register for the competition submitting their original research papers.
The winner of the Czech Economic Society’s Young Economist of 2022 Award is Jan Hanousek Jr. for his work “Social Networks and Strategic Behavior: Case of Political Inside Information”. Jan Hanousek Jr. studies at the University of South Florida and the work was partly done at the Mendel University in Brno. The paper uses the trading data for U.S. senators to study the effects of social networks and interactions on potentially disseminating private information. The various layers of their network are created using several hand-collected data, including committee assignments, political donations, joint fundraising, and seating orders. The results reveal that senators use and share insider information, e.g., the introduction of firm-relevant legislation, and their transactions could predict upcoming important corporate events/news. Furthermore, the results suggest that every time the information is shared, other individuals in the network observe and trade on it, thus disseminating insider information to the public.
Second place in the Young Economist of the Year competition has been awarded to Azizbek Tokhirov for his paper “Female Labor Supply Consequences of Ethnic Riots: Theory and Evidence from Kyrgyzstan”. Azizbek Tokhirov studies at CERGE at the Charles University in Prague and is a research assistant at CERGE-EI, joint workplace of CERGE and the Economic Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His work was partly done at the Geomigrace Center. In his study, the author analyses consequences of exposure to violent ethnic riots on labour supply of men and women. Using robust estimation techniques, he shows that in the short run all affected adults experience destructive consequences on their businesses. However, in the longer run exposed male entrepreneurs return to the labour market, while female entrepreneurs do not. The author provides suggestive evidence that female post-conflict behaviour is driven by behavioural effects, such as increased mistrust and unwillingness to cooperate with others.
Third place in the Young Economist of the Year competition goes to Ante Šterc for his work “Limited Consideration in the Investment Fund Choice”. Ante Šterc studies at CERGE at the Charles University in Prague and is a junior researcher at CERGE-EI, joint workplace of CERGE and the Economic Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His paper examines the role of limited consideration in household financial decisions across the wealth distribution. It focuses on the household choice of investment funds - a fundamental choice of financial intermediaries for households. The author finds that all households across the wealth distribution face significant losses. However, even conditional on wealth, households with a lower level of education or financial literacy face larger losses. Finally, his study highlights the importance of considering financial literacy and limited consideration in future research on the investment decision of households as well as the importance of investment in financial education.
The Karel Engliš Prize for the best paper on the Czech economic policy was awarded to František Mašek for his work “Average Inflation Targeting in a Behavioral Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian Model”. František Mašek studies at Sapienza University of Rome and the work was partly done at CERGE-EI in Prague. The paper deals with the average inflation targeting regime, where the central bank tries to keep the average of values of inflation calculated for a relatively long-time interval close to the target value. Using a model enriched by the existence of multiple types of households and elements of bounded rationality, the author investigates the optimal length of the time interval in various specific situations. The article can be a useful contribution to the debate in the event that the Czech National Bank, following the example of the U.S. central bank, considers a transition from inflation targeting to average inflation targeting.
The awards were presented ceremoniously at the 12th biannual conference of the Czech Economic Society which took place on 25th November 2022 at Prague University of Economics and Business.
The Young Economist competition is sponsored by the Council of Scientific Societies of the Czech Republic. CES media partners are Roklen24 and Bankovnictví Magazine.
More information about the CES’s awards can be found on the CES website
https://www.cse.cz/en/page/young-economist-of-the-year-award
Contact for journalists
Daniel Münich, president of the CES, guarantor of the award, tel: +420 224005175, munichd@gmail.com
Kamil Galuščák, member of the CES board in charge of media relations, tel: +420 224414580, kamil.galuscak@volny.cz
Note for editors
The Czech Economic Society (CES) is a civic association of professionals and supporters of the field of economics. The main mission of the CES is to help the development and popularisation of the economy in the Czech Republic in a way that respects and supports opinion plurality and the independent development of economics courses. The CES is a member of the Council of Scientific Societies of the Czech Republic.
1_PR_Award_CSE_Young_Economist_2022.docx (25.11.2022)
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