In 2014, the EUI Economics Department instituted a prize for researchers' best end of first-year summer reports. As of 2019, this prize is awarded for the best second-year paper and presentation. The Prize is meant to provide a further incentive to the researchers to write a compelling paper, which should then become one of their thesis chapters.
The Prize is recognised by the organiser of the Second-Year Forum, Economics Professor Ozlem Bedre-Defolie, and the Economics Department's Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Fabrizia Mealli.
Andrea Tizzani has received this year's Prize for his winning paper, When Heroes Fall Short: Charismatic Leadership and Disillusionment. Using empirical methods, the paper explores the effects of a charismatic leader's visit on the increase in national identity and in a longer run reduction in national identity.
Rodolfo Salonia received the Prize for his winning paper, A Model of Tax Incidence Across Marketplaces. The paper studies the implications of digital taxes on the market equilibrium of a digital platform and on the traditional off-line market that competes for the supply of sellers. Digital taxes shift supply of sellers from the platform to off-platform, raising prices on the platform and lowering prices off-platform, thus benefiting off-platform consumers and harming the platform consumers. If the platform is sufficiently efficient, low cost or high-benefit to users, ad-valorem taxes are more likely to be better than unit taxes on the platform transactions. Otherwise, unit taxes are better. The OECD digital tax scheme effectively works as a subsidy on revenues from digital platform transactions, thus shifting the volume of sellers from the off-platform to the platform, decreasing the prices on the platform and increasing the prices off-platform.
The Economics Department expresses its profound gratitude to all of the discussants for their excellent work. The comments presented at the Forum have been fundamental and have contributed to guiding the second-year researchers in their research.