BANK OF ALBANIA

PRESS RELEASE
Governor of the Bank of Albania, Mr Gent Sejko, receives journalists, experts and media executives at the end-of year event “Governor's Award for the Best Diploma Thesis 2024”

Publication date: 16.12.2024

 

On 16 December 2024, the Governor of the Bank of Albania, Mr Gent Sejko, met with renowned publicists, experts, journalists and representatives of the print and electronic media in Albania.

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This meeting, has become a tradition, where opinion makers, public influencers and powerful voices in journalism honour us with their presence, to enjoy some time together and to simultaneously welcome together another special activity, the announcement of the winners of the Governor’s Award for the Best Diploma Thesis.

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In his welcome address, Governor Sejko thanked the guests for their participation, as well as for accurately and objectively conveying all the activities of the Bank of Albania throughout 2024, including its decision-making in the field of monetary policy. “Through your work, the Bank of Albania has been able to communicate to the public its decision-making in the field of monetary policy and financial stability, announce regulatory amendments, and provide the latest updates in the areas of banking supervision, payment systems, financial education and inclusion, and financial digitalization. Your professionalism has enabled us to have an effective communication, helping to transmit our policies in the economy, and consequently, preserving price stability, financial sector stability, and the overall macroeconomic stability in Albania.”- stated Governor Sejko.

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He highlighted that new technological developments and global uncertainties render the communication of central banks with the public even more crucial. For Albania, this communication becomes even more valuable, as individuals are challenged by the unsatisfactory level of financial literacy, particularly digital literacy. Nevertheless, thanks to your work and in close collaboration with you, we have succeeded in conveying to the public the stance and expected consequences of every policy undertaken, reflecting the truth and eliminating any misinterpretation or deviation from it.

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By the end of this activity, as it is already a tradition, the three winners of the “Governor's Award for the Best Diploma Thesis 2024” were also announced. The Bank of Albania organises this context for the 18th year in a raw, inviting Albanian students from all over the world to present their researches in the field of economics and finance. 24 students studying at different levels of university participated in this competition. The presented theses address the traditional objectives and policies of central banks. At the same time, most of them focus on issues which have dominated the activity of the Bank of Albania throughout 2024, in addition to issues related to climate change, financial education and inclusion of citizens and payment systems.

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Year 2025 will be a jubilee year, as it marks the 100th anniversary of our central bank. In anticipation of this anniversary, some of the topics were focused on historical research, analysing the character and evolution of trade agreements, as well as monetary and financial developments. "I am pleased to say that the topics align with our expectations and meet the best characteristics of scientific work." - said Mr Sejko.

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The first prize was awarded to Mr Markelian Blacëri, a Master's student at University of Padova, Economics and Management Department “Marco Fanno” - for the study on: “The Long-Term Shadows of Monetary Policy: Can Policy Shocks Affect the Natural Rate of Unemployment?”. This thesis focuses on assessing the impact of monetary policy on the natural rate of unemployment, by analysing two specific types of shocks: first, the traditional monetary policy shocks, and second, changes in the information regarding the monetary policy stance, also known as the “central bank's forward guidance on future monetary policy”. The author employs a combined approach of empirical models to look at these effects. In the first phase, a standard "Local Projection" model is applied, enhanced with Bayesian methodology. Second, an alternative specification of the empirical model is applied, based on the SVAR methodology (Structural Vector Autoregressions).

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The third prize was awarded to Ms Eneda Gjoka, a student at “Aleksandër Moisiu” University, Durrës, on “Use of Learning Machine to forecast inflation in economic trends”. The thesis addresses the use of advanced Machine Learning (ML) techniques for forecasting inflation rates in Albania, aiming to improve the accuracy of predictions and provide valuable insights into economic trends. Traditional economic models often encounter challenges in forecasting inflation rates due to the complexity of interactions between monetary policy, supply and demand dynamics, as well as impacts from global financial events. This study explores ML techniques such as time series analysis and advanced LSTM-type neural networks are explored to identify patterns and predict inflation rates more accurately.

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