Preface

In this book, I study what happens when actors are influenced by their social network but can also choose their relationships in this network. While writing the book, I benefited much from my own social environment. Although I did not choose all the people in that environment, I do not think I could have made a better choice if given the chance. I take this opportunity to thank a number of these people.

First of all, I owe much to Vincent Buskens, who was my daily supervisor during my time as a PhD student. His all-round expertise and merciless eye for detail have been crucial for the overall quality of the research presented here. In particular, Chapters 2 and 4 also benefited much from his skills as a programmer and an experimentalist. However, it was especially his cheerful and informal personal style that made working with him a great pleasure. Stephanie Rosenkranz, as my second supervisor, has improved the book in many places by her sharp insights, and as a relative outsider from economics, made sure that the multidisciplinary perspective did not get lost. My promoter Werner Raub always made sure that I used the right words in the right place, so that what I wrote was what I meant, even when I did not know yet that that was what I meant. His strong analytical perspective has much improved the theoretical consistency of the book. Moreover, he always took care that everything around my project was organized smoothly. Finally, I am grateful for his encouragement and confidence since I was an undergraduate, which strongly influenced my choice for an academic career.

I am grateful to the coauthors of the research underlying the chapters of this book for their collaboration. Jeroen Weesie has nevertheless contributed to my research in direct (as a coauthor of Chapter 2) and indirect ways. He provided statistical advice on many of the analyses presented here, gave some crucial advice on Chapter 3 but was above all an inspiring teacher and colleague. The study presented in Chapter 5 would have been impossible without the collaboration of Andrea Knecht, who not only provided the data but also shared her expertise on the data and the substantive application. Karen Cook has been a great host during my stay at Stanford University, where I developed the early versions of Chapter 3, which she also coauthored.

I am grateful to Flaminio Squazzoni for initiating the process which made the publication of this book possible.

Michał Bojanowski, Richard Zijdeman, Bastian Westbrock, and Sytske Weidema proofread various parts of the manuscript and provided highly useful comments on the text.

I thank Joris van der Veer and Dennie van Dolder for their assistance in running the experiments reported in Chapter 4.

I thank my family for their love and support, and in particular my father, for always stimulating my curiosity and critical thinking. Finally, I thank Sytske for being by my side.