From 2021, the Baltic Economic Association organizes a competition for the best paper presented by a PhD student at the Baltic Economic Conference. The competition is open to any paper authored by PhD students (or who defended in the year of the Conference), irrespective of institutional affiliation or nationality. The rules of the competition are available here.
Since 2026, the financial prize for the BEC Best PhD Paper Award amounts to 1000 EUR.
The jury comprises three BEA members representing each of the three Baltic States: Aurelija Proškutė (Lietuvos bankas), Konstantins Benkovskis (Latvijas Banka), Karsten Staehr (TalTech / Eesti Pank).
Previous awards:
2025: Marta Guash-Rusinol (LSE) for the paper “Debt Without Investment”
2024: Daniel Schmidt (University of Amsterdam) for the paper “Retirement and the marginal propensity to consume: Theory and evidence”
2023: Julius Ilciukas (University of Amsterdam) for the paper “Fertility and Parental Retirement”
2022: Triinu Tapver (TalTech) for the paper “ Luck and skill in the performance of global equity funds in Central and Eastern Europe”
2021: Ilja Kantorovitch (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) for the paper “Exuberant and Uninformed: How Financial Markets (Mis-)Allocate Capital During Booms”