Master thesis prize for PhD candidate Hanna Samaryna

PhD candidate Hanna Samaryna of the FEB has won the second prize in a thesis competition of the Polish Central Bank. It is a competition for the best Master thesis defended in 2008 at all the universities in Poland, in the field of economic science. Almost 80 master thesis competed and Hanna Samaryna received the second prize, consisting of a diploma, a money reward of  7000 Polish zloty (around 1700 euro's) and a souvenir set of collection coins of the Polish Central Bank. Also the bank will finance the publication of the whole thesis as a book or in separate papers.

Hanna Samaryna wrote her prize winning thesis for her master programme at the University of Economics in Poznan (Poland). The thesis was evaluated by the supervisor and reviewer as excellent and also defended with grade excellent. "I am very happy with a prize", says Samaryna. "It's motivating, but it also puts on me huge responsibility and commitment to future work, particularly for using my knowledge and experience in producing a good quality PhD thesis at the University of Groningen and investing in my further scientific development."

Deflation in Japan

According to the jury, consisting of the experienced and highly respected scientists from several outstanding universities in Poland, Samaryna's thesis works were all very good and some of them could become PhD thesis after additional research. The topic of the thesis was "The causes, consequences and methods of fighting deflation in Japan in years 1990-2005" in which she provided the theoretical and empirical analysis of deflation based on the example of Japanese economy in 1990-2005. Samaryna investigated the causes which brought prosperous Japan in 80s  to a deep recession and deflation in 90s. Also she analyzed monetary, economic and social consequences of deflation in Japan and provided a detailed study of the tools used by monetary policy and fiscal policy in order to fight deflation and accelerate economic recovering. Hanna Samaryna attempted to verify the hypothesis that deflation in Japan was sustained by the inappropriate conduct of monetary and fiscal policy, lack of coordination between them, as well as by the specific features of  the economic and financial system of this country.

Curriculum vitae

Hanna Samaryna, born in Belarus, finished her master's programme at the University of Economics in Poznan, with specialization in finance and monetary policy. After that she studied for one year in a PhD program at the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economic Institute, CERGE-EI in Prague. Then she was admitted to the University of Groningen for a PhD programme at SOM, within the Department of International Economics and Business. She conducts research on the monetary policy strategies in the world, and their determinacy. Her supervisor is prof. Jacob de Haan.