FIRES - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the Innovation Studies Group of Utrecht University
Andrea M. Herrmann is Assistant Professor at the Innovation Studies Group of Utrecht University. From 2010 to 2012, she was a Marie Curie Research Scholar at Columbia University (New York). She also was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung (Cologne) from 2006 to 2008. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) and an MSc from the London School of Economics (London). In her research, Dr. Herrmann studies institutional influences on new ventures and incumbent firms from a political-economic perspective. More concretely, her research interests comprise the areas of political economy, institutional theory, varieties of capitalism, entrepreneurship, corporate strategy, competitiveness, economic European integration, and innovation policy, as well as quantitative and qualitative research methodology. Her publications include various internationally peer-reviewed articles and a book (2008) entitled: One Political Economy, One Competitive Strategy? Oxford; Oxford University Press.
Axel MARX is deputy-director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies at the University of Leuven. He studied in Leuven, Hull and Cambridge and holds a PhD from the University of Leuven. As deputy-director of the Centre he manages the day-to-day activities of the Centre and several large-scale projects including inter alia the Policy Research Centre for the Flemish Government on Foreign Affairs, International Business and International Cooperation and a large-scale European FP7-project on human rights (19-partner project).
Catarina SECO MATOS is a PhD candidate at University of Lisbon (Portugal), has a post-graduation degree in International Development Agents from the Catalunya University (Spain) and holds a degree in Economics from University of Coimbra. Catarina has worked as a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers (Barcelona), as a Project and Human Resources Manager at WS Energia and as a volunteer in social projects in Portugal, Brazil and Angola. Catarina's present research focuses on the dynamics of ageing and entrepreneurship.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the Economics Department of the University
Claire ECONOMIDOU is an Assistant Professor at the Economics Department of the University of Piraeus . Before becoming a member of the department, she was Assistant Professor at the University of Utrecht (Utrecht School of Economics, Utrecht University) in the Netherlands from 2004 until 2009. From early 2004 and for six consecutive months she was brought to EUROSTAT (EU Commission) Trade Sector in Luxembourg. She holds a Doctorate (PhD) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2004), Graduate Diploma in Economic Science (MSc) from the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki (2000), and a basic degree (BSc) in Mathematics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1997). At the University of Piraeus teaches Macroeconomic Theory I, Economic Growth and Development, and Special Topics in Macroeconomics. Her research interests lie in the fields of Economic Growth and Development and International Trade. More specifically, the current research examines the role of productivity, technology, efficiency and trade on growth countries ( industries ). Her research has been published in prestigious journals such as European Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, Review of Development Economics.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
Job Titles:
- Professor of Political Science
David Soskice is the LSE School Professor of Political Science and Economics in the Department of Government. He was Economics Fellow of University College, Oxford from 1967 to 1990, teaching macroeconomics. He was Research Director and Research Professor at the WZB Berlin from 1990 until 2007, holding a part-time Centennial professorship at the LSE European Institute from 2004-2007. From 2007 to 2012 he was Research Professor of Comparative Political Economy at Oxford University, and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College divided his time between Nuffield College Oxford; and each Spring Semester he was Research Professor in Political Science at Duke University. His main past work has been on Varieties of Capitalism (OUP, 2001) with Peter Hall (Harvard); he is engaged in long-term research with Torben Iversen (Harvard) on the relation between advanced capitalism and advanced democracies, and they were co-winners of the American Political Science Association 2007 Luebbert Prize; with Wendy Carlin (UCL), he is publishing Macroeconomics: Institutions, Instability and the Financial System (Oxford University Press: forthcoming 2014); and he is working with Nicola Lacey (LSE) on Anglo-American comparisons in crime, punishment, residential segregation and education to answer the question: Why are the truly disadvantaged American not British? He gave the 2013 Federico Caffe lectures in Rome on Advanced Capitalism in Advanced Democracies: A Comparative Political Economic Framework for the Knowledge Economy. He worked in the Blair Policy Unit at 10 Downing St in 1997-8. He was Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard in 2007, the Forrest Mars Visiting Professor at Yale in 2004, and the Semans Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke in 2001. He was President of the European Political Science Association from 2011 to 2013. And he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2013 in the Politics Section and with cross-membership in the Economics Section.
Job Titles:
- Founder of the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index
Job Titles:
- IST - Istituto Superior Técnico Lisboa
Erik Stam is Full Professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics, where he holds the chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Next to this he has been co-founder and Academic Director of the Utrecht Center for Entrepreneurship and leader of the research area Innovation and Welfare of the Utrecht University Strategic Research Theme Institutions. He held positions at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Cambridge, the Max Planck Institute of Economics (Jena, Germany), and the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR). In 2007 he was awarded the Herbert Simon Prize of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. He is currently associate editor of Small Business Economics. His research focuses on institutions, entrepreneurship, innovation and the relationships with economic development at the micro and macro levels. He has (co-)authored seven books (including Micro-Foundations for Innovation Policy and Ambitious Entrepreneurship) and over eighty book chapters and articles in journals like Economic Geography, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Regional Studies, and Small Business Economics. Next to his scientific work he is often consulted by local, regional, national (Netherlands, Belgium, UK, US) and supra-national (World Bank, OECD, EU) policy makers and private sector organizations on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Job Titles:
- Researcher at the Department of History
Gerarda Westerhuis is researcher at the Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University, and lecturer at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. In April 2013 she started her new research project (veni grant), entitled "Unraveling the origins of a banking crisis: changing perceptions of risk and managerial beliefs in Dutch banking, 1957-2007." As part of the research project on Business in the Netherlands in the 20th century she published a book on the corporate governance and financing of business in the Netherlands during the 20th century. She is co-initiator and coordinator of an international project "The power of corporate networks: a comparative and historical perspective", which results in a book published by Routledge.
Gerarda obtained her PhD from Utrecht University with a dissertation on the expansion of Dutch banks and insurance companies to the United States, published under the title "Conquering the American market". She worked in different business environments such as ABN AMRO, Rabobank and Nationale-Nederlanden in the period 1965-2005. She also holds an MA in Social and Economic History from the University of Groningen, and worked for three years as a project manager in the Marketing department of Fortis Bank. In short, her research focuses in particular on banking and elites. She combines theories and methodologies from economic and sociological sciences applying the long term perspective of a historian. She makes use of large data sets, in-depth archival research, and interviews.
Gresa LATIFI is doing her PhD studies in Economics at Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy) at the department of Management Economics and Industrial Engineering. She received her Master degree in Economics with a specialization in Innovation and Changes, from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany) in June 2015. From October 2013 to June 2015 she has worked as Student Research Assistant the Chair of Business Dynamics Innovation and Economic Change at the same university. She obtained her Bachelor degree in the field of Management and Information Technology from Hasan Prishtina University of Prishtina (Kosovo) in September 2012. The main objective of Miss Latifi's research is to better understand the determinants that spurs the emergence of venture capital activity. Particularly, she is interested to analyze if and how venture capital activity in a specific geographical context, is influenced by formal and informal institutions
Gábor RAPPAI earned a degree in Economics at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, in 1987. He gained his Candidate of Sciences in economics in 1997 and became a Hablilitated Doctor in economics in 2003. He began his career at the University of Pécs as a trainee and later as assistant lecturer. From 1997, Dr. Rappai works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Econometrics, and he is the chair of the Institute of Business Methodologies. His main research fields are financial time-series data modelling and econometric testing of casualities. From 1998 to 2005, Dr. Rappai was the Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Economics and Fellow of the Tjalling C. Koopmans Research Institute at Utrecht University 's School of Economics
Hans Schenk is professor of economics and Fellow of the Tjalling C. Koopmans Research Institute at Utrecht University's School of Economics (USE) of which he was founding director. Before accepting the professorship at USE, he was a professor of economics and business at Tilburg University and an associate professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Groningen. Hans Schenk graduated from the University of Oregon, obtained his MBA in the collaborative Leuven/Cornell programme and his summa cum laude doctorate in economics from Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis. He has held chairs at several foreign institutions, among which the China-Europe Management Institute in Beijing and Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. He currently is a fellow of CIBAM at Cambridge University (UK).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- Professor in Sustainability and Societal Change at the Utrecht Sustainability Institute
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of International Macroeconomics and Economic Development at the Utrecht
Jacob A. Jordaan is Assistant Professor of International Macroeconomics and Economic Development at the Utrecht school of Economics. Previously, he held positions at the VU University Amsterdam and the University of Birmingham. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography from the London School of Economics and a MSc in International Economics and Economic Geography from Utrecht University. His research interests focus on the growth and productivity effects of international trade and multinational enterprises (MNEs) as main drivers of ongoing processes of globalization. One of the questions that he is particularly interested in is whether and how growth and productivity are fostered when countries specialize in different but related sets of activities. The role of MNEs in this process is indispensable, as these firms are responsible for slicing up value chains by locating activities and tasks across many different countries in the world economy. The research project offers a very good setting to study this question, in the context of identifying how entrepreneurship, FDI and other factors drive related variety of economies and how in turn related variety, FDI and entrepreneurship affect growth and productivity the national and regional level in the European Union.
Kathleen (Karen) Geurts holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). Her research interests are in firm dynamics, job creation and destruction, entrepreneurship, and value chain restructuring. Previously, she worked as a researcher and research manager at policy-oriented institutes. She has been leading research projects which aim at improving the access, quality and use of large-scale business data for research. She was engaged in establishing the Belgian Labor Market Datawarehouse, and has solid working relationships with the Statistics Department of the Belgian Social Security Office, a main provider of data that will be used in this project.
Her PhD, ‘Job creation and firm dynamics. Understanding the role of entry, survival and restructuring', focuses on two crucial stages in the life-cycle of firms that involve a large amount of job reallocation: the early years after startup and the period when two firms merge into a single company. It investigates how the employment outcomes differ depending on the firm's individual characteristics.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor at Department of Management
Luca GRILLI is Associate Professor at Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of Politecnico di Milano since 2010, where he teaches Industrial Economics, Network Economics and Innovation at graduate and post-graduate levels. He obtained a MSc in Economics from the University of York (UK) and a Phd in Economics from the University of Siena (Italy). Grilli has participated in numerous applied research projects promoted by private institutions, Italian public regulatory agencies, Italian public research institutions and the European Commission ("VICO Project", 7° Framework programme; "PICO Project", 6° Framework programme) among others.
His main research interests are on entrepreneurship, innovation and regulation issues in high-tech sectors. Specifically most of his research effort is focused on the dynamics of NTBFs, their drivers of success, and the policy instruments best suited to enhance their creation and performances. He has been awarded the title of Visiting Professor in SPRU (University of Sussex) from May and June 2014. He has published in numerous scientific journals.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School
Mark Sanders researches and teaches topics that connect entrepreneurship, innovation and the transition towards more sustainable economic growth. His methods are both empirical and theoretical and his teaching is both within the economics department and in courses at the faculty of geosciences and sciences. Mark is also a member of the Sustainable Finance Lab that aims to make financial markets contribute to this transition.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico
Miguel AMARAL is an Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) - Technical University of Lisbon and as a Research Associate at the Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, where he directs the Laboratory of Technology Policy and Management. His research interests and teaching focus mainly on Technological Change and Entrepreneurial Dynamics.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at the School of Economics
Miguel TORRES PRETO is an Assistant Professor at the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is also a research fellow at IN+, Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research. His research interests include performance effects of labor mobility, especially the value of entrepreneurial human capital at individual, regional, and international level.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School
Mirjam van Praag is Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Professor of Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School, Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics. Besides she holds an unpaid position as a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization in the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam. She is also a Crown Member of the Socioeconomic Council (SER) of the Dutch government.
Job Titles:
- Student in Economics at the Chair
Moritz Zoellner is a PhD Student in Economics at the Chair of Business Dynamics, Innovation and Economic Change at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He has been working as a Research Assistant in the Project "Die Entwicklung der Gründung innovativer Unternehmen in Thüringen im bundesweiten Vergleich" since 2014. Mr Zoellner obtained his M.Sc. Economics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (with distinction) as well as a Master in Global Entrepreneurship and Management, with a focus on Economics of Innovation, at the Università degli Studi dell'Insubria (with distinction). His main fields of research are Social Network Analysis and Regional Development.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor at Utrecht University School of Economics
Niels Bosma is assistant professor at Utrecht University School of Economics and research fellow at Vlerick Business School. He holds a PhD in economic geography, obtained at Utrecht University and an MSc degree in econometrics (University of Groningen). Before moving to Utrecht University Niels was affiliated to London Business School, EIM Business and Policy Research (now part of the Panteia group), Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Tinbergen Institute. Niels is particularly interested in individuals' entrepreneurial and innovative behaviour. He is part of the team that coordinates the Utrecht University Social Entrepreneurship Initiative and a member of GECES, an expert group advising the European Commission on activities related to the Social Business Initiative. Niels has actively contributed to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the world's largest study on entrepreneurship (GEM; www.gemconsortium.org). He was GEM research director and co-author of several GEM Global Reports between 2006 and 2013.
Páger BALÁZS graduated as economist at the University of Pécs in 2010 and he is working as research assistant for the Institute for Regional Studies Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has been doing his doctoral studies since 2010 in the Doctoral School in Regional Policy and Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pécs. He has taken part in various research projects regarding measuring regional and national entrepreneurship, identifying development paths in Central and Eastern European regions and determining the regional innovation processes in Hungary.
Rens van Tilburg is an economist with extensive knowledge of sustainability, innovation and finance. He has worked in the European and Dutch Parliament and for the Advisory Council of the Dutch government on Science and Innovation. Currently he is the secretary of the Sustainable Finance Lab, a network of academics of different universities, working together with regulators, policymakers and the financial sector to bring a more sustainable financial sector. His research interest include the question how to finance the transformation of the economy towards a more socially and ecologically sustainable path.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Management and Was
- Visiting Professor at Stanford University
Saul ESTRIN is a Professor of Management and was the founding Head of the Department of Management at LSE. He was formerly a Professor of Economics, and Faculty Dean, at London Business School, where he also served in 2001 as Acting Dean. He held the Adecco Professorship of Business and Society at London Business School and was the Research Director of the Centre for New and Emerging Markets and Director of the CIS Middle Europe Centre. His research covers a wide range of fields in comparative economic systems including the economics of transition, privatisation, foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship. He has published around 150 books and scholarly papers in these areas, in journals such as Quarterly Journal of Economics, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Economic Literature and Review of Economics and Statistics. In recent years, his research has concentrated on the way that national economic institutions influence the character and extent of entrepreneurship in that country, with papers on the impact of bankruptcy laws, innovation policies, property right and government policies on entrepreneurship, especially high employment growth entrepreneurship. He has become from September 2014 the President of the European Association of Comparative Economic Systems.
He also has considerable practitioner experience. He is currently a Non-executive Director of Barings Emerging Markets and was previously a member of the Academic Panel of the postal regulator, Postcomm. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, European Union and OECD, DfID and NERA and has taught a wide variety of senior executive programmes for major companies.
Saul has been a visiting Professor at Stanford University, Michigan Business School, Cornell University and the European University Institute. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, the IZA and the William Davidson Institute and an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He edited, for several years, the Business Strategy Review.
Tamás Sebestyén holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pécs, Hungary. His thesis dealt with the possible intersections of network theory and economic modelling. From 2011 he is assistant professor at the Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Pécs and research fellow at the MTA-PTE Innovation and Economic Growth Research Group, operating at the same faculty, from 2012. He is the leader of the Economic Analysis MA program at the Faculty and from 2015 he is appointed as emissary of the dean in the field of research. His main research interest is economic modeling - besides its mainstream vein he is interested in some border areas especially the possible linkages between standard economic models with network theory and agent based modelling. He has been publishing in these fields in leading journals and he has been participating in various research projects aiming at developing regional policy impact analyzing models.
Werner Liebregts is a PhD Candidate at the Utrecht University School of Economics. Working title of his PhD thesis being: "Hidden Entrepreneurship. Multilevel Analyses of the Determinants and Consequences of Entrepreneurial Employee Activity". From November 2012 to August 2013 he was Junior Researcher at TNO (in Delft and Hoofddorp), where he worked on various projects that develop knowledge to boost sustainable productivity and employability, especially of people with a vulnerable labor market position.
Job Titles:
- Professorial Research Fellow
Zoltan J. Acs is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Management at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a University Professor at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University (on leave), Visiting Professor at Imperial College Business School in London and affiliated with the University of Pecs in Hungary. Previously he was a Research Scholar and co-founder of the group Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy, at the Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany, served as, Research Fellow at the U. S. Bureau of the Census, Chief Economist at the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), Associate Director of the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) at the University of Maryland, Research Fellow at the Science Center Berlin (WZB), Research Associate at the Institute onWestern Europe at Columbia University and Scholar-in-Residence at the Kauffman Foundation.
Dr. Acs holds a Ph.D in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City and is a leading advocate of the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation for economic development. His research cuts across disciplines and has appeared in the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Kyklos, Journal of Urban Economics, Economica, Research Policy, Regional Studies, JBV, SEJ, and Science Policy. His most recent book `Why Philanthropy Matters: How the wealthy give, and what it means for our economic well-being`, was published by Princeton University Press.
Along with Dr. Laszlo Szerb is the founder of the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI) that is the first tool to track entrepreneurship, institutions and economic development in the global economy. He is also the coeditor with David Audretsch and founder of Small Business Economics a leading academic journal. He received the 2001 International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research, on behalf of The Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development, holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Pecs and is a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Job Titles:
- POLIMI - Politecnico Di Milano