Stijn Broekema wins MSc Thesis of the Year Award FEB 2016

On Thursday 6 October, Stijn Broekema (MSc Marketing and MSc Finance) was announced the winner of the FEB Master Thesis Award 2015-2016. His research on the relationship between new product announcements and shareholder value in the pharmaceutical industry, was praised for its clear scientific contribution and perfect fit within related literature. The prize he received? A cheque worth € 1000.

Jury report

In his thesis, which was graded with a 10, Stijn investigates whether new product announcements in the pharmaceutical industry have an impact on shareholder value. To do so, he combined research methods and theories from both marketing and finance. On top of that, Stijn applied methodologies like event studies and GARCH modeling, which had not been lectured in the courses of his Master programme.

The jury praised the great amount of work Stijn carried out by gathering his research data himself. This is a major task for this type of project. The jury concluded that Stijn’s research has yielded valuable empirical insights that are relevant for the business world, as well as from an academic perspective.

Stijn’s earlier achievements

In earlier stages of his academic career, Stijn has also been praised for his exceptional work. He was declared the best student of FEB earlier this year. He won a GUF-100 prize for excellent students in July and was one of the candidates who competed for the overall ‘Aart Bosman Student Excellence Award’. According to his thesis supervisor, Professor of Marketing, Jaap Wieringa, “Stijn is a truly outstanding student”.

Stijn’s thesis has already won the Leeflang award for best Marketing Thesis at FEB. The audience prize of the Leeflang Award went to Stijn as well: “Proof of his excellent communication skills to explain a difficult subject to a laymen’s audience”.

Other candidates

The other two Master theses that were in the running for the award, were also praised for their clear scientific contribution. Candidate Roy Greijdanus dedicated his thesis to evaluating resource sharing for offshore wind farm O&M. This topic has extremely high societal relevance, namely reducing the cost of maintaining offshore wind farms. This cost reduction can be achieved by collaboration between service providers in the acquisition and use of expensive assets. The jury declared that Roy’s entire thesis process demonstrates high academic quality.

Candidate Koen Seebus studied why many persons do not invest in stocks. In his thesis, Koen states that weak social ties play an important role within this phenomena. According to the jury, Koen’s thesis leads to important new social insights, but at the same time, forms a solid basis for an article in a scientific journal.

All three theses were told to have important implications for managers and other decision makers. We congratulate all candidates with their great achievements.