BME 2023 awards the best papers on equities, fixed income and derivatives

The prestige of the Finance Forum continues growing and the researchers[MPO1] [TMY2]  at the forefront of  the different branches of finance every year attend the presentation and discussion about  more than 100 selected papers covering disciplines such as Asset Pricing, Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, Fixed Income, Equity and Derivatives markets and products, Market Microstructure and Banking, featuring this year a growing presence of papers related to Sustainable Finance (ESG). In addition to AEFIN's partners, this year's Finance Forum was supported and sponsored by some of the main institutions of the Spanish financial market: BME, the Bank of Spain, CNMV, INVERCO, the Santander Financial Institute and the Unicaja Foundation.

The plenary lectures at this year's Finance Forum included Sydney C. Ludvigson, professor and researcher at New York University, and Marco Pagano, from the University of Naples Federico II, who is one of Europe's most prestigious finance researchers.

 At the Finance Forum gala dinner, BME awarded prizes for the best research papers. The BME 2023 award for the best paper on "Equity Markets" went to the study entitled "Dividend Restrictions and Search for Income", co-authored by Esther Cáceres and Matías Lamas, researchers at the Bank of Spain.

The research addresses an original topic: the consequences of the European Central Bank's decision to restrict dividend payments on the shares of the main European banks as of 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The analysis shows the importance of dividends in investment portfolios. It also demonstrates the existence of investors who, when selecting the assets for their portfolios, are governed by the dividend payment policies of listed companies (dividend seekers). The paper finds a redistribution effect of portfolios that has an impact on the return on assets: the shares of banks more exposed to this type of investor are more penalized than those of other banks in which the weight of this type of investor is lower.

Luis Sanchez Vila, from Instituto BME, and Alejandro Gomez Pastor, from BME Exchanges, members of the jury: “the paper adds value in terms of the analysis of the consequences of such a novel decision at the time and establishes a framework for future situations of this magnitude and scope". 

The BME 2023 prize for the best paper on Fixed Income went to "Asymmetric Information and Corporate Lending: Evidence from SME Bond Markets", jointly authored by Alessandra Iannamorelli, Stefano Nobili, Antonio Scalia, researchers at the Bank of Italy, and Luana Zaccaria of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF) in Rome.

According to Jose Luis Bujanda, from Instituto the BME and member of the jury of the BME Awards: "the work provides new information on the access of small and medium-sized companies to exchange-based financing, in this case through fixed-income issues. This is a particularly relevant issue for Spain, where many companies are considering this financing alternative".

The BME 2023 award for the best paper on "Derivatives Markets" went to the study "The Index Effect: Evidence from the Option Market", by Fabian Hollstein, from the School of Human and Business Sciences of the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken, Germany; and Chardin Wese Simen, from the Management School of the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. 

In short, the three winners of the BME awards at the Finance Forum show the growing quality of the papers presented and the international prestige that year after year this meeting of top-level researchers is acquiring, which also gives way to young talents with great potential. 
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