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SOM Awards for researchers Rob Alessie, Jochen Mierau, Peter van Santen and Xianjia Ye

28 November 2014

On 27 November 2014, the 2013 SOM awards were presented for Best Graduate of the Research Master, best PhD Thesis, Outstanding Junior Researcher and for Outstanding Researcher at the Faculty of Economics and Business. As part of the ceremony Ionica Smeets gave an inspirational talk on “how to talk about research”.

Ionica Smeets is a science journalist with a PhD in mathematics and writes columns for various newspapers and magazines such as De Volkskrant and New Scientist. Smeets presented various popular-scientific shows on Dutch television.

Best Research Master Graduate

Xianjia Ye won the award for Best Graduate of the Research Master Economics & Business, worth 1,000 euro's. His master thesis “Industrial structural change and labour upgrading when production is internationally fragmented”, supervised by Marcel Timmer and Gaaitzen de Vries was awarded with a grade 9 and he graduated with an average 9.1. Xianjia is now working as a PhD student at FEB.

The other two nominees where Nonhlanhla Dube (now also working as a PhD at FEB) and Bert Kramer (currently a 2nd year PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada).

Best PhD Thesis

The award of 1,500 euro was for Peter van Santen for his thesis “Precautionary saving, wealth accumulation and pensions”, supervised by Prof. Rob Alessie and Prof. Adriaan Kalwij. The jury awarded this thesis because amongst others it contains two high quality papers in respectively the European Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Peter van Santen is currently working as a researcher at the Sveriges Riksbank in Stockholm ,Sweden.

The other nominees where Suzanne Kok and Gerdien Regts-Walters. Suzanne Kok is now working at the Ministry of Finance in the Hague, Gerdien Regts is working at FEB and is the coordinator of the centre of expertise Healthwise.

Outstanding Junior Researcher

The 2,000 euro prize for junior researcher was awarded to Jochen Mierau. He obtained his PhD degree in 2011, and he already published more than 10 articles in international journals like the top journal International Economic Review. In 2011 he co-organised the Spring Meeting of Young Economists in Groningen and he is one of the organisers of the 2015 European Public Choice Society Coference.

The other two nominees were FEB researchers Jan Willem Bolderdijk en Susanne Täuber.


Outstanding Researcher

Rob Alessie, professor of micro-econometrics at FEB was awarded 2,500 euro by the SOM Board for his overall performance. Rob Alessie has numerous publications in top journals like the Journal of Public Economics, Economic Journal and the Journal of Financial Economics. He supervised 13 PhD students and is coordinator of the NETSPAR project “Pensions, savings and retirement decisions”.

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Last modified:29 February 2024 10.02 a.m.

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