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In her dissertation ‘Mobile Consumers and Applications: Essays on Mobile Marketing’ Zeynep Aydin reflected both sides of the mobile eco-system by combining novel data sets reflecting the actions of mobile businesses and the reactions of mobile users. Drawing from multiple research streams, this dissertation contributes to various literatures such as mobile applications, user generated content, and new product development. In the broader sense, the findings collectively relate to creating successful products in digital markets and continuous product development.

Associate Professor Chen Li and Professor Peter Koudijs of Erasmus School of Economics have been appointed as members of Young Erasmus Academy, a network of young talented researchers, by analogy with The Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their appointment is for a period of five years.

In his dissertation ‘Robotized Warehouses: Design and Performance Analysis’, Kaveh Azadeh structured the latest automated technologies and overviewed these technologies and the research. He also reviewed the modeling techniques used and the research opportunities they provide. Moreover, he investigated the vertical storage and retrieval system, an emerging robotic technology for e-commerce warehouses, and studies systems in which robots collaborate with a human picker to efficiently pick the orders by reducing the pickers’ unproductive walking time. 

Professor of Information Management and Markets at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) Eric van Heck received three awards from the Association for Information Systems (AIS) during the annual AIS Awards and Closing Session of the ICIS 2020 Conference in December. AIS leads the research, teaching, and practice of information systems worldwide, and has more than 4,800 members in 92 countries. The awards reward outstanding scientific achievement, service, and contributions across all aspects of the field.

In his dissertation ‘Integrating Genetics into Economics’, Eric Slob developed and compared some methods that can be used in genoeconomics, and showed through empirical studies how genetically informed study designs can give new insights to economists. The methods developed and compared in this dissertation foster the use of genes as instrumental variables and help further the understanding of genetic relationships across socio-economically relevant characteristics. The main empirical applications in this dissertations concern smoking behaviour, entrepreneurship, and the structure of the brain.

The European Commission has awarded postdoctoral researcher Renske Stans and Assistant Professor Matthijs Korevaar of Erasmus School of Economics a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship. Stans receives an Individual Fellowship for her research project on ‘Where You Live Matters?’, Korevaar a Global Fellowship for his research project on ‘The Long-Term Consequences of Shocks to Housing Wealth: Insights from History’.

In his dissertation 'Essays on Ownership Structures, Corporate Finance Policies and Financial Reporting Decisions’, Sereeparp Anantavrasilp covers empirical analyses in the fields of corporate governance, corporate finance and accounting conservatism – as well as the relationships between them. The impact of the global financial crisis is also a key theme that runs through each of the three studies.

The outstanding achievements of researchers at the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) have been recognised in its annual awards. The ERIM Awards acknowledge the contribution of research to international business and management and were presented for excellence and scientific impact in dissertations and articles, for outstanding young researchers, and for research with societal impact. One new award this year reflects the principles and practices of Open Science – a new approach to the scientific process based on co-operative work and new ways of diffusing knowledge using digital technologies and new collaborative tools.

In her dissertation 'Competition in the Retail Market of Consumer Packaged Goods’, Wei Li investigated competition in the retail market of consumer packaged goods from different angles. The study on brand competitive reactions has found that the reaction is influenced by brands’ relative market shares. The study on retail chain competition has found that private label positioning has an impact on chain shares’ price sensitivities. The study on sales forecasting compared different methods of including competition information.

In his dissertation 'New models and applications for railway timetabling’, Gert-Jaap Polinder developed methods that can support the design of an optimal railway timetable such that the timetable is as good as possible. Using this ideal timetable, one can make clear whether regular departure patterns are useful or not, and how this is related with the expected travel time of passengers.