The Governor of the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) Jozef Makúch, has granted third prize to our Ph.D. graduate Peter Ondko for his dissertation titled “Essays on Access to External Finance, Acquisitions and Productivity”.

RESEARCH FOCUS

Peter’s thesis consists of three chapters that are empirical investigations of classical questions in the financial and industrial economics literature on the influence of institutions and industry conditions on firm’s access to finance, the propensity to merge, and productivity.

In the first chapter Peter examines whether financial markets development facilitates the efficient allocation of resources. He shows that firms in industries with high growth opportunities use more external financing in financially more developed countries.

In the second chapter, he investigates the role of productivity in the selection of firms into acquisitions and whether acquisitions lead to productivity gains. He concludes that there is positive assortative matching in revenue productivity for firms engaging in vertical acquisitions and economically and statistically significant productivity gains exist only for targets acquired in horizontal acquisitions.

In the last section of his work he demonstrates that liberalization of network industries in the EU leads to substantial productivity growth.

THE IMPACT OF THE PRIZE

The NBS Governor says about the prize:”…the aim of the granting the prize is to support the best economics students in Slovakia and help them to become an inspiration for next generations of students”.

ABOUT THE COMPETITION

The NBS organized the competition in 2013 to honor its 20th. Anniversary. Students  were invited to apply with their theses or dissertations which investigate the fields of monetary economics, macroeconomics, financial economics and financial stability. All works submitted had to fulfill strict requirements, particularly exceptional quality and unique contribution to scientific knowledge.