Kim van Berkel, an alumna of Erasmus School of Economics, has won the Jan Brouwer Thesis Prize 2024 with her socially relevant master's thesis. This prize of 3,000 euros is awarded annually by the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen).
Kim, who obtained a master’s degree in Policy Economics (summa cum laude, 9.2/10) in September 2023, wins the Jan Brouwer Thesis Prize with her master’s thesis, titled "Incentivizing social assistance recipients: Quasi-experimental evidence from trials with earnings exemptions in the Netherlands" . In her thesis, she studies the effects of increased and longer term earnings exemptions for social assistance recipients in Amsterdam and Rotterdam on the employment rate among social assistance recipients and the exit rate from social assistance.
Kim van Berkel is very grateful and honoured that her thesis is awarded the Jan Brouwer Thesis Prize: During my research I was driven by genuine personal and scientific curiosity, wanting to know whether these policies were effective and if they should be part of the activation policies for social assistance recipients in all of the Netherlands. Winning this prize motivates me to persist in contributing valuable insights to the academic community and expanding the knowledge base for better social policies.’
Currently, Kim works as a researcher in the Labour and Social Security group at SEO Amsterdam Economics. Her research focuses on the evaluation of policies that relate to social security and the labour market. In the past, she worked as a researcher at the Applied University of Amsterdam, where she was part of the research team of the Amsterdam Experiment with Welfare, a study into different types of guidance for welfare recipients in Amsterdam. Here, she was first introduced to the idea of earnings exemptions for social assistance recipients. She previously also obtained a master’s degree in Econometrics from Erasmus School of Economics (2022, cum laude).
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The Jan Brouwer Thesis Prize will be presented to Kim van Berkel on Friday, February 9, 2024, in the KHMW building in Haarlem.
For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media & Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl and +316 53 641 846.