Krzysztof, a Student among Bocconi Top Scholars
At Bocconi Research Day, at the end of May, some fifteen professors presented their research projects with an interdisciplinary potential. On the stage, among them, there was also Krzysztof Zaremba. When the Rector excused himself for not remembering at which Department Zaremba works, the young Polish replied: "I'm... I'm a student". He could well have replied "I'm an IGIER Visiting Student", because that was the reason why he was on the stage with a presentation on entrepreneurial social networks in Africa.
A second-year MSc in Economic and Social Sciences student, Krzysztof is working at two research projects regarding networks with his mentor, Prof. Fernando Vega-Redondo. The project he presented at the Research Day aims to measure the benefits of a diverse social network through a field experiment in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. One group of entrepreneurs will be provided with an app allowing them to communicate with a large network of other entrepreneurs, also abroad, while the social network of a control group will be confined to their home country. The entrepreneurial ideas of the two groups will then be rated by professional venture capitalists "and we expect that a richer network will translate into better ideas". The second project is a big data analysis of Spanish companies' trading networks. "We've been to Madrid and we collected data about all Spanish companies", Zaremba says.
His thesis will also deal with networks, but of a different nature. "Thanks to a database provided by University of Pennsylvania professor Hans-Peter Kohler, I'll study the relation between sexual networks and HIV on a island in Malawi".
Krzysztof followed his undergraduate studies in Paris, where he obtained his bachelor at SciencesPo, and London, where he did an exchange at London School of Economics and Political Science. He searched the Internet for a two-year MSc designed to prepare students for research and thus knew of Bocconi's MSc in Economic and Social Sciences and the IGIER Visiting Students Initiative. "Then I double-checked with a SciencesPo student who had been to Bocconi for an exchange and chose to come to Milan".
After the experience as a visiting student, Zaremba will be a research assistant intern at IGIER for the next semester and is already designing a laboratory experiment to measure the impact of identity on choices in an uncertain context.