Welcome again to another one of my adventures. It's been a while since I've wrote, cause I think last time I did not even receive grades for the first two courses. Lucky for me (and you since I might not have been here writing to you otherwise) I passed both courses! And now I am already very far into the second period.
This period contains somewhat more let's say accurate topics than the first period had to offer. Since I've chosen to do a master onEconomics of Public Policy and Management and public policy is in the papers every single day this is rather normal and I must say I also like it.
Firstly a few weeks ago we talked about pension schemes during the course of Public Risk Management. Since I'm working at an investment agency that offers pension product (in the Dutch third pillar of the pension system) and is soon to position itself on the market with a product in the collective second pillar this topic was highly interesting for me.
Secondly and more in a broad sense, I'm writing a paper on the EU Emission Trading System. The emission trading system that was implemented to fight what is called the biggest market failure of all times, environment damage (mostly due to greenhouse gasses). A few weeks ago I visited a lecture on this topic, since as of january 2012 this system will be expanded to include aviation companies, EU as well as non-EU airlines. From systems competition theory (broadly talkes about in my other course Policy Competition in an International World) it makes no sense that the EU is doing this, since it can have major competitiveness disadvantages! What we're trying to do is answer why the EU is still implementing this and if the policy is sustainable in an international world.
Thirdly, today we had to hand in our thesis subject proposal if we want to pick our own subject instead of picking from a list of subjects offered by USE. Since I wanted to be sure to really write about a subject I was sure I was going to enjoy writing about I thought through some subjects and eventually decided on writing about the reconciliation of work and family life and the division of labour and care between parents. I'd found the right supervisor for this subject pretty quickly and got her approval for supervising my thesis. And while I handed my registration form in this morning, when I read the Volkskrant this evening there was a column of a D66 politician exactly about this subject!
And that's what I like about this master, that these subjects are talked about in the streets and in the papers, and that I actually learn to think about them in an academic way.
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