At the 55th EBES Conference, the John P. Rust Best Paper Award went to 

“University Proximity and Financial Accessibility in Startup Patenting: Evidence from Italy” by Francesco Aiello from Università della Calabria, Italy; Lucia Errico from Università della Calabria, Italy; Lidia Mannarino from Università della Calabria, Italy; and Valeria Pupo from Università della Calabria, Italy.

We would like to thank Springer Nature for their support of the Best Paper Award.

The runner-up paper is “Private Investment and Public Investment: Total Rates of Return and Global Balances in the OECD” by José Alves from ISEG – University of Lisbon; UECE/REM; CESifo, Portugal.

The third paper is “Preempting Gas Bans: Policy Retrenchment and Credit Allocation” by Yuna Heo from University of Basel and Swiss Finance Institute, Switzerland; Thomas Lambert from Rotterdam School of Management, Holland; and Francesco Mazzola from ESCP Business School, France.