Celebrating research excellence at FDEF

The annual FDEF research awards at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance (FDEF) at the University of Luxembourg were held virtually on 8 February 2021. With 70 participants, the well-attended event was hosted by Professor Benny Mantin, head of the Faculty’s research committee.

Dean Katalin Ligeti opened the ceremony with a few words on the paramount importance of research. “Research is the foundation of our activities as academics. It is how we create and shape the knowledge that we then convey through teaching or outreach activities. It also serves as a measure of quality, innovation and excellence at our Faculty,” Ligeti explained. “High-profile research, in the form of externally funded projects, or papers published in renowned journals, can be a driving force for bringing recognition to our institution.”

At the event, three doctoral candidates were honoured with the 'Best PhD student’ award, while two Junior Researchers took home the ‘Best Publication by a Junior Researcher’ prize:

Rana Cömertpay, doctoral candidate within the Department of Economics and Management. Cömertpay's PhD topic revolves around the economics of migration, forced displacement, conflict and aging. Her ongoing projects include the analysis of the determinants of mobility of Syrian refugees in Turkey, the investigation of the change in ethnic diversity and its possible consequences for ethnic attachment, social capital, public goods, and conflict for long-term development, as well as a project aiming at measuring the impact of media access on political accountability and protests, in the context of Al-Jazeera and the Arab Spring.

Vladimir Levin, doctoral candidate within the Department of Finance. During his studies at FDEF, Levin produced an interesting research paper “Dark Trading and Financial Markets Stability” that was presented and discussed at several international conferences in Shanghai, Paris, and Lugano. This paper has been submitted and is currently under review at the prestigious top A “The Review of Financial Studies” journal. Levin is now working on his single-authored theoretical paper on the effects of dark trading on price discovery and market liquidity.

Georgios Bouchagiar, doctoral candidate within the Department of Law. Bouchagiar, a specialist in law and technology, is studying how the use of artificial intelligence is affecting criminal justice. A former practicing attorney, he boasts an impressive body of work, including more than 30 publications in the last 5 years and many conference and seminar speaking engagements.

Çağıl Koçyiğit, Assistant Professor and Senior Research Scientist within the Luxembourg Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Koçyiğit was awarded a best paper prize for her paper entitled “Robust Multidimensional Pricing: Separation without Regret”. Koçyiğit and co-authors describe how robust optimisation techniques can be used to answer the question of how much money a seller should charge for new products when there is only minimal information about the buyers' willingness to pay. The paper has been recently accepted for publishing in top-tier journal ‘Mathematical Programming’ 

Roberto Steri, Associate Professor within the department of Finance. Steri received the best paper prize for his 2020 paper, “The Sources of Financial Constraints”, which was recently published in the Journal of Financial Economics. In his paper, Steri and co-authors seek to identify underlying causes that prevent firms from raising external financing by developing, solving and estimating dynamic incentive models with different types of financial frictions.

Bolstered by bright young talent, research at FDEF has flourished during 2020. With support from a dedicated research facilitator team, Faculty researchers obtained financing for 16 FNR-funded projects, 5 EU-funded projects and 4 university-funded projects through the Institute for Advanced Studies.