As part of the ifk semester lectures on 17 May 2022 in the auditorium of the castle of the Westphalian Wilhelms University, two former students from Münster received a prize from the Deutsche Bundesbank for their outstanding theses. The award was presented by the President of the Head Office in NRW of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Mr. Jochen Metzger, following his lecture on the topic "Opportunities and Benefits of the Digital Euro". The lecture is conditionally closely related to the statutory tasks of the Deutsche Bundesbank.

Alexander Nitschke was awarded a prize for his thesis on "The Influence of Interest Rate Levels on the Systemic Risk of Banks - an Empirical Analysis of Possible Channels". Within the framework of an empirical thesis, he investigated how a long period of low-interest rates, which has persisted since the global financial crisis, affects the systemic risk of banks. Here, he shows that a low-interest rate environment tends to be associated with significantly higher systemic risk for banks.

Annika Plenter received the award for her master thesis on "Natural Language Processing for the Identification of Credit Risk". In her master's thesis, Ms. Plenter analyses the use of Natural Language Processing, i.e., the machine analysis of texts and text modules, for the assessment of credit default risk. In doing so, she shows that ensemble methods outperform the individual algorithms that have been predominantly used to date in the prediction of credit risks, but that these methods are associated with higher model complexity and lower transparency.

Institute Director Prof. Dr. Andreas Pfingsten was visibly pleased with the successful work. At the end of the event, he thanked the president most sincerely for his lecture, the awarding of the graduates and the wonderful cooperation overall.