Doctoral category winner: Ludmila Fadejeva
Ludmila Fadejeva's doctoral thesis "Essays on the International Transmission of Economic and Policy Shocks" examines how economic and policy shocks are transmitted between countries and what the impact of monetary policy is in Central and Eastern European countries. Merike Kukk, Senior Economist at the Bank of Estonia, emphasized that Fadejeva used novel methods to identify monetary policy shocks in her work, bringing an important methodological innovation to the study.
Winner of the Master's thesis category: Elina Bõkovskaja
In the Master's category, the prize went to Elina Bõkovskaja's work “The Impact of KredEx Reconstruction Grants on Improving the Energy Efficiency of Apartment Buildings” , which analyses the effectiveness of KredEx grants in increasing energy efficiency in residential buildings. Kukk highlighted that the work was distinguished by its comprehensive methodology, which combined data from five databases and used four methods for evaluation. “The results provide valuable information for shaping Estonia's housing and energy policy,” she said. The prize for the doctoral category is 3,000 euros, and for the master's category it is 2,000 euros. In 2025, the master's prize was divided equally between the two laureates.
The Urmas Sepp Memorial Prizes have been awarded by Bank of Estonia since 2003. Urmas Sepp (1956–2002) was the head of the macroeconomics and later economic research department of the Bank of Estonia and an expert who played an important role in the development of Estonian economic policy.