Year: 2009
Type: other
Abstract: Working on the thesis that lies before you, has enabled me to combine several of my longstanding passions: doing quantitative applied research, blending knowledge and techniques from different fields, and working on socially relevant topics.I started my PhD at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, where my research focused on education, particularly on the effects of school composition on achievement (peer effects).The results of this initial period appear in the last two chapters of this thesis.But at the same time, I also had a supervisor at the Faculty of Economics and Business and I attended courses at the Tinbergen Institute's research master in Economics, which proved to be very valuable and stimulating for me.Reading not only social scientific, but also economic literature, my research interests gradually turned more and more into the direction of economics.When, about halfway during my PhD, Hessel Oosterbeek asked me if I would like to have an office at his Economics of Education group, I did not need to hesitate.A large part of my research here remained focused on educational issues, as Chapter 3 bears witness to.But, like in the previous projects, an interdisciplinary focus remained.Studying whether teachers give ethnic minority students different grades for the same work than they would have given to ethnic majority students, I tried to combine economic research with psychological theories.My last research project (which appears in Chapter 2), went into a somewhat different direction.Initially intending to study a more education-related topic, I stumbled on results that I found too exciting and important to leave them for what they were, but which were not related to education anymore, but only to health.Thanks to the support of my supervisors, I was able to pursue this research on the long-term health effects on the next generation of Ramadan fasting during pregnancy further.This project, finally, brought me into a field of overlap between econometric research methods and medical theories.There are many people that I would like to thank for their help and support during my PhD work in general, or for their contributions to one of the four essays that together constitute this PhD thesis.Let me start with thanking those people who contributed to specific chapters.For Chapter 2, I would like to thank
Author: Reyn van Ewijk
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2275875832