Jury Report on the KVS Award for the Best Doctoral Thesis in Economics of the Academic Years 2006–2007 and 2007–2008

Abstract

The KVS Award for the best doctoral thesis was instituted in 1999 by the Royal Netherlands Economic Association on the occasion of its 150th anniversary. Its aim is to promote the study of economics. The KVS medal is awarded every 2 years to the PhD student who wrote the best doctoral thesis in economics. The award consists of a medal and a prize of EUR 5.000. The first prize-winner in 2000 was Vincent Buskens for his thesis on Social networks and trust, the second in 2002 was Sander Onderstal for his Papers in auction theory. In 2004 Stefan Wuyts won the award for his thesis on Partner selection in business markets and in 2006 the prize went to Robert Sparrow for his thesis on Health, education and economic crisis: protecting the poor in Indonesia. This time the long list of 11 theses submitted by the Dutch economic faculties as their top theses defended in the past 2 years consists of (in alphabetical order): Maarten Bosker, The empirical relevance of geographical economics; Lammertjan Dam, Corporate social responsibility and financial markets; Roy Hoevenaars, Strategic asset allocation and asset liability management; Ralph Koijen, Essays on asset pricing; Sandra Maximiano, Essays in organizational economics; Valeri Nikolaev, Financial reporting, debt contracting and valuation; Ana Llena-Nozal, On the dynamics of health, work and socio-economic status; Remco Prins, Modeling consumer adoption and usage of value-added mobile services;