Corvinus - Institute of Finance

29/05/2026

🎓 Celebrating outstanding student research at the Institute of Finance

This spring, the Institute of Finance at Corvinus University of Budapest was proud to host three sections of the Scientific Students’ Association Conference (TDK), showcasing excellent student research in economics and finance.

From more than 15 submitted papers, the highest-ranked works advanced to the oral round. The best papers received awards and qualified for OTDK 2027, Hungary’s national academic competition for student researchers.

Congratulations to the award-winning students in the three sections hosted by our Institute:

Section 1 – Banking, Personal Finance and Macro Finance
1st Place: Domoszlai Dorina, Supervisor: Varga Erzsébet Teréz
Paper: “A családi adókedvezmény optimális megosztásának matematikai modellje és empirikus vizsgálata valós adatokon”
2nd Place: Németi Anna, Supervisor: Vaskövi Ágnes
Paper: “Overconfidence, Risk Perception, and Financial Preparedness – Evidence from the 2024 U.S. NFCS”
2nd Place: Sagátné Jeney Zsuzsanna Ildikó, Supervisor: Vaskövi Ágnes
Paper: “Időskori pénzügyi sérülékenység Kelet-Közép-Európában – Többváltozós elemzés a SHARE adatbázis alapján”

Section 2 – Financial Markets
1st Place: Dawud Ayman, Supervisor: Badics Milán Csaba
Paper: “Tradable Safe-Haven Portfolio for Equity Market Stress”
2nd Place: Becskeházi Zsombor, Supervisors: Balázs Ákos Miklós and Fülöp András
Paper: “Estimating Currency Risk Using Hybrid Models – An EGARCH, LSTM and MDN-Based Approach”

Section 3 – Corporate Finance
1st Place: Maróty Dorottya, Supervisor: Keresztúri Judit Lilla
Paper: “A tőkeszerkezet és a jövedelmezőség kapcsolata a V4-országokban”
1st Place: Bereczky Ákos József, Supervisor: Lakatos László Péter
Paper: “The Informational Filter – Temporal Friction and Conditional Conservatism in Private Credit”
3rd Place: Lengyel Ádám, Supervisor: Naffa Helena
Paper: “Reassessing the Financial Value of ESG under Biodiversity Risk and Disclosure – Evidence from Global Equity Markets”

In addition, several TDK papers supervised by faculty members of the Institute of Finance received awards in other university sections:

Statisztika és ökonometria (Statistics and Econometrics)
1st Place: Vida Tamás, Supervisor: Badics Milán Csaba
Paper: “Estimating Time-Varying Financial Correlations Under Market Shocks – A Comparative Analysis of DCC-GARCH and TVGL”

Európai gazdaság (European Economy)
3rd Place: Fehér Zoltán Gellért, Supervisor: Samet Günay
Paper: “The Impact of the Russia–Ukraine War – Left-Tail Risk Analysis of EU Equity Markets from a Geographical Perspective”
Gazdaságmodellezés (Economic Modelling)
3rd Place: Siklér Julianna Eleonóra, Supervisors: Felföldi-Szűcs Nóra Ágota and Száz János
Paper: “A Black–Litterman-modell bővítése makroökonómiai indikátorokra alapozott befektetői nézetekkel”

We warmly congratulate all award-winning students and their supervisors, and wish them great success at OTDK 2027! 👏

22/05/2026

🌿 International Day for Biological Diversity 22 May 2026!

Biodiversity loss is not only an environmental challenge. It is also a financial, economic, and policy challenge.
At the Sustainable Finance Research Centre, we are committed to raising awareness about biodiversity finance and the funding mechanisms that can help direct capital towards nature-positive outcomes.
To mark International Day for Biological Diversity, our team has prepared a four-part video series introducing key sustainable finance funding mechanisms:
🌱 Blended Finance — using public, private, and concessional capital to support projects that may otherwise struggle to attract investment.
🌱 Natural Capital Financing Facility — showing how finance can support projects that protect, restore, or enhance natural capital.
🌱 Payments for Ecosystem Services — recognizing the value of the benefits nature provides, from clean water and pollination to climate resilience.
🌱 Biodiversity Offsets — compensating for residual biodiversity impacts when avoidance and mitigation are not enough.
Through these videos, we aim to make biodiversity finance more accessible and support wider understanding of the tools that can help fund nature protection and restoration.
📌 Watch the full Biodiversity Day playlist on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/-BCE
📌 Explore more resources in our Knowledge Hub: https://www.sustainablefinanceresearch.com/learn/knowledge-hub

📷 Photo credit: Photo taken by ornithology Professor Marcin Tobolka (University of Poznan), documenting biodiversity in solar energy landscapes, for our joint project BioSolar.

30/04/2026

We hosted Professor Brian Lucey, Trinity College Dublin, who explains why saving biodiversity is saving the economy.

Our colleague Antony Patino prepared this brief interview with the professor who addressed efforts recent in biodiversity finance.

Watch the video here:

Naturefin - Interreg Europe
Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem

NATUREFIN Interview with Professor Brian Lucey | Biodiversity and Finance

30/04/2026

Our professor Péter Csóka, Head of the Doctoral School of Economics and Business Informatics, has recently co-authored an ambitious new working paper now available on SSRN.

Performance Attribution: the Harsanyi Method
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6495601

Co-authored with Carlo Acerbi and Jean-Jacques Herings, this research represents a significant attempt to formulate performance attribution in a truly principled way—providing the theoretical foundation that has largely been missing in existing "ad hoc" approaches.

Key Concept Definitions:
🔹 Performance Attribution (PA): Explaining the "why" behind active returns—identifying which specific decisions caused a portfolio to over- or under-perform relative to its benchmark.
🔹 Performance Contribution (PC): Also known as P&L attribution or profit and loss explanation (see, e.g., Carr and Wu, 2020; Rubinstein, 2001). This seeks to attribute the profit and loss of a portfolio to the variations of the risk factors it is exposed to—such as stock prices, volatilities, interest rates, forex rates, credit defaults, and downgradings.
🔹 Risk Attribution: Decomposing the total risk—measured by volatility, Value-at-Risk (VaR), or Expected Shortfall (ES)—into its underlying drivers to see which factors are responsible for the portfolio's risk exposure.

A New Frontier: Explainable AI (XAI) Beyond finance, this method can decompose changes in any function, including Explainable AI (XAI). While widely used methods like SHAP employ the Shapley value to attribute model predictions to single features, our approach utilizes Harsanyi dividends. This allows us to move beyond single additive numbers and explicitly identify high-order interactions between features, offering a more robust framework for interpreting "black-box" AI models.

21/04/2026

What really gives firms an edge in the age of AI: the technology itself, or the people who know how to use it? This question took center stage at our latest Corvinus Finance Research Seminar, where Prof. Ender Demir presented his research, “Does AI Human Capital Pay Off? Evidence from U.S. Hospitality Firms.”
The study offers compelling evidence that specialized AI-skilled human capital can improve firm financial performance in the hospitality industry. Drawing on data from publicly listed U.S. hospitality firms, the research shows that firms investing in specialized AI talent tend to achieve stronger profitability and operating cash flow. Yet the impact is far from uniform. The benefits appear most clearly among smaller firms, businesses with lower fixed-cost intensity, and firms pursuing cost leadership strategies rather than differentiation.
Perhaps most importantly, the findings suggest that AI creates value not simply by being adopted, but by being embedded into operations through capable human expertise. The gains are driven mainly by efficiency improvements, better liquidity management, and more stable cash flows. A timely and thought-provoking contribution to the discussion on AI, strategy, and firm performance.

20/04/2026

We are proud of the achievements of the Naturefin - Interreg Europe project, hosted by our institute. Our colleagues work on delivering impact-oriented policy improvement across six European regions that apply the principles of Biodiversity Finance in territorial development.

02/04/2026

We are proud to share that our professors at the Institute of Finance, Samet Gunay, Kata Váradi, and Nóra Felföldi-Szűcs, have published a new paper in Quality & Quantity titled “The role of gold in bubble formation in the U.S. equity market and bitcoin.” In this study, the authors examine how bubble dynamics emerge in the S&P 500 and Bitcoin, while also exploring whether gold can serve as an indicator of broader market stress.

Using advanced methods such as the GSADF bubble test, time-varying Granger causality, and multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis, the paper compares both original and gold-filtered price series to better understand whether explosive price movements are driven by general market conditions or by asset-specific speculation.

The findings reveal a clear contrast between traditional equity markets and cryptocurrencies. According to the paper, Bitcoin shows statistically significant and persistent bubble behavior in both raw and filtered data, suggesting that its price dynamics are largely shaped by self-reinforcing speculative forces. By contrast, the S&P 500 does not display consistent evidence of sustained bubble behavior, and its movements remain more closely tied to short memory and faster information absorption. The study also shows that gold has a stable predictive relationship with equity prices, reflecting the role of global risk sentiment, while no similarly persistent connection is found for Bitcoin.

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-026-02677-2

23/03/2026

🎙️ New podcast episode released: The State of Hungary’s Housing Market
A new episode of the Corvinus Business Intelligence Podcast explores one of the most pressing economic and social issues in Hungary today: the housing market.

In Episode 1 – “Home Start and the New Balance of Supply and Demand”, the discussion examines recent developments in the Hungarian housing market, including the potential impact of the Home Start program, changes in supply and demand, and broader challenges related to housing affordability and the housing crisis.

The episode features a discussion between Ágnes Vaskövi, faculty member at the Institute of Finance at Corvinus University of Budapest and member of the CEEC Household Finance Research Group, and András Varga, Real Estate Advisory at KPMG. The conversation is moderated by Theodore Boone.

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb74tD-4Rn4

🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0jyDBCvQqkDq0VJuYLMgrQ?si=IiESXKyRQ6i_fcNcckMyzw&nd=1&dlsi=920b0b33ce674dca

The episode was produced in collaboration with the teams behind Corvinus Business Intelligence Podcast | LinkedIn and the Consulting Club | LinkedIn, who continue to bring forward discussions on key economic and business topics.

19/03/2026

We are pleased to share that Dr. János Száz, Professor Emeritus of the Institute of Finance at Corvinus University of Budapest, has been awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit in recognition of his “dedicated and exemplary professional career, particularly his research and teaching related to financial markets and corporate finance, as well as his influential public professional contributions.” The award was presented at a formal ceremony in February 2026.

Over the past 50 years, János Száz’s innovative, ever-evolving, and idea-rich work has inspired generations within the Institute and the university, while awakening many students’ and colleagues’ interest in the world of finance.

Talent development has always been especially important to him, and thanks to his commitment, many young people went on to become demonstrators or begin their PhD studies here. Numerous programmes and curricula are linked to his name, and he has also played a significant role in the development of the Hungarian capital market.

Among earlier generations of finance professionals, there are very few who do not know his name or who do not immediately think of him when the topic of options arises.

18/03/2026

Corvinus University of Budapest hosted the Hungarian launch of "Biodiversity Finance: The Economic, Operational, and Societal Impacts of Biodiversity Loss" on 11 March 2026, highlighting a growing area of research at the intersection of ecology and finance.

Co-edited by Helena Naffa, Associate Professor at the Institute of Finance and founding director of the university’s Sustainable Finance Research Centre, the international volume argues that biodiversity loss should no longer be seen only as an environmental issue, but also as a systemic financial risk. The book brings together recent research showing how the degradation of ecosystems can affect supply chains, corporate valuation, credit risk, and ultimately financial stability.

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, the volume also examines how biodiversity-related risks can be incorporated into banking and corporate risk management, while presenting innovative instruments such as biodiversity-linked bonds that tie financial returns to measurable environmental outcomes.

Read more about the event here: https://www.uni-corvinus.hu/post/hir/new-academic-book-shows-how-the-ecological-crisis-becomes-a-financial-risk/?lang=en