Meet our Professors

My name is Michiel Gerritse and I am an associate professor at Erasmus School of Economics. I am also the Director of the Urban, Port and Transport Economics Programme. I have lived in the Netherlands for my entire life, with a few academic exceptions: I have lived in London and Milan for a while, which gives you some contrast to Dutch life and academia.

What I enjoy particularly about the Netherlands, are the people that I have around me here: my friends and family. Apart from economics, my hobbies are mostly sport related. Recently, I have been playing tennis. Other than that, I enjoy cooking; and eating as well. I have a ton of favourite dishes, but the Italian kitchen is generally my favourite. That, however, also has to do with the fact that I lived there for a while and tried to understand the local cuisine.

Student experience

As a student, I did not really see the point of economics in the first years. I was busier making friends and trying to figure out life or doing sports. In my second year, I sort of realised that I needed to set myself goals or deadlines. I decided to do extra courses because with the pressure of having extra exams, I found myself willing to work a little harder. During the fourth or fifth year of my study, I really started to see the point of economics; I started enjoying it and was really getting into it!

Teaching

Personally, I never try to over-prepare for lectures. I try to just talk to the students and to explain the material in a natural way, because I feel the social part is important when learning. If I give students a very scripted lecture, I do not think that the message will land very well. To me, it is thrilling when my students master an analytical or intellectual skill. Often, they think it is difficult at first, but they think it is obvious only a few weeks later – sometimes without even realising how much progress they made. 

Research

My research is mainly focussed on urban, international and geographical economics. I am an international economist by training, but I quickly realised that these fields are very connected, as they all deal with trade and location. However, a lot of this trade is done by firms, which simply try to organise themselves as best as they can. They may choose to ship their products somewhere or to invest in a new plant. Hence, these firms will also make location choices. In my research, I often break down the aggregate trade and investment flows to understand the consequences of how individual firms make choices. For instance, firms may hold inventories as buffers against the uncertainty of a globalising world. If you want to understand how a pandemic or the shutdown of a major international trade route affects you, you need to understand how long firms’ buffers can weather disruption and how they manage those buffers.

My name is Jan Stoop and I am an associate professor at Erasmus School of Economics. My interest lies within the field of behavioural economics, where I analyse the social preferences of humans. I teach two courses: the Introduction to Behavioural Economics for first year bachelor students in Economics and Experimental Economics for master students in Behavioural Economics or Econometrics. Additionally, I am a member of the Doctoral Committee for the work of several PhD candidates. 

When I came in as a student at Tilburg University, I wanted to be an accountant. I had seen examples in my surroundings where people became filthy rich by becoming an accountant, and that appealed to me. However, when I got my first class in accountancy, I knew right away that becoming an accountant was not meant for me. However, we got these other economics courses such as macroeconomics and microeconomics, and I loved that! That is when I knew I wanted to become a regular economist. From there on, studying did not feel like a burden. I wanted to know what the books had to say, especially when I came in touch with behavioural economics and doing experiments. This renewed interest quickly resulted in the wish of becoming a professor. It has been a career goal of mine for quite some time now, and it is highly rewarding to see things work out. 

Teaching

How you prepare for teaching differs a lot per professor. I have been teaching Experimental Economics for about ten years now and because of the process of repetition, less preparation is needed. Students watch the course material in the videos that are provided. During class, we then go over examples that are closely related to the course material. This always ignites nice discussions, also about the ethics of doing (field) experiments. Comparing the various students I teach: I do like teaching the master students the most, since there is more interaction. Typically, the first-year students are rather shy. When it comes to master students, this is all gone. People stand up and if I say something that they do not believe or do not agree with, they challenge me. I love that a lot!

Research

Coming up with a research topic and ultimately a research question is always difficult. For me, the research method comes first. Based on that method, I will formulate the question. I like to walk around while looking for and thinking about opportunities. Only after observing something interesting, I will come up with an intriguing research question. I see something interesting happening and then I think: ‘how can I use this to do research?’ For example, if someone receives a misdelivered envelope full of cash, I would be interested in investigating whether the recipient will keep the cash or return it to the sender. I will then come up with a method as a base for my research, and the question comes afterwards. 

My research is mostly concerned with the measurement of social preferences of humans. I do this by means of lab experiments. In these lab experiments, (usually) students are playing a game behind a computer. These games gather insights into the social preferences of the participants. Additional to the lab experiments, I conduct field experiments in a so-called natural environment. The insights from these experiments will be compared to evaluate to what degree the social preferences measured in the lab are in accordance with those in the real world. Lastly, besides research on social preferences, I study how to design optimal labour contracts. In short, this means I study when contract employees exert most effort for their boss. 

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