Multidisciplinary Economics

I Multidisciplinary Economics: the Birth of a New Economics

Faculty in the Netherlands

Opening Address, Historical Mistakes Rectified, Tjalling C. Koopmans: an Inspiring Example, Styles of Research in Economics at Cowles

II Multidisciplinary Economics at Utrecht University

Origins and Development of Multidisciplinary Economics at Utrecht University, Multidisciplinary Economic Research at Utrecht University

III Spanning Multidisciplinary Economics: the Institutional, Historical and Spatial Dimensions of Economics. Restructuring the Welfare State

Introduction , Towards a European Social Model: Managing Social Risks through Transitional Labour Markets, Dutch Debates: Modernising Social Security by Introducing the Life Course as a Frame of Reference, Learning to Trust

Industrial Dynamics and Innovation Economics

Introduction, The Truth about Markets, The State of the Industrial Organization Field, On the Dynamics of Innovation Policy: a Dutch Perspective, 'History Friendly' Models of Industrial Evolution: an Overview

Financing Problems of the Welfare State

Introduction, Public Governance and Private Governance: Exchanging Ideas, Macroeconomics of Fiscal Policy and Government Debt, Joys and Pains of Public Debt

EU Integration and the New Economic Geography

Introduction, European Integration and Economic Geography: Theory and Empirics in the Regional Convergence Debate, An Account of Geographic Concentration Patterns in Europe - Introduction and Summary

Past and Future of the Global Financial Architecture

Introduction, Regulation and the Role of Central Banks in an Increasingly Integrated Financial World, Who is Running the IMF: Critical Shareholders or the Staff?, Synthetic Money

Economics and Ageing

Introduction, Health, Wealth and the Role of Institutions

Inaugural addresses

Organisational Economics in an Age of Restructuring, or:How Corporate Strategies Can Harm Your Economy, Does Social Security Crowd Out Private

Peter de Gijsel took his PhD at the university of Dortmund in 1980. He taught economics at the universities of Dortmund, Regensburg and Maastricht and was professor of economics at the University of Osnabrück from 1994 to 1998. From 2000 onwards he was the driving force behind the setting up of the new Faculty of Economics of Utrecht University. He was appointed the first Dean of the faculty in 2004. De Gijsel's special fields of interest are micro-, labour market and monetary economics.



Hans Schenk.

After studying economics and business administration at the universities of Nyenrode, Amsterdam, Oregon and Leuven, professor Schenk took his PhD at the university of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France. He taught economics and business at various universities in the Netherlands (e.g. in Groningen and Rotterdam) and abroad (e.g. in Beijing and Strasbourg)and was professor of Industrial Policy and Corperate Strategy at Tilburg University before coming to Utrecht as professor of Organisational Economics in 2002. A year later, he became director of the Tjalling Koopmans Research Institute. Schenk has advised numerous firms and governments and specialises in mergers and acquisitions and competitiveness policy.

This volume reports on the inaugural conference of the Utrecht School of Economics and the Tjalling C. Koopmans Research Institute. Its title refers to the objective of the new faculty and is rooted in the history of economics at Utrecht: it originated in Law, with economists attached to the Social Sciences, Geography and History. Thus was born an economics with institutional, historical and spatial dimensions. The naming of its research institute was natural in the sense that Koopmans, one of the world's most distinguished economists, was actually a student at Utrecht, but in mathematics and physics: he moved to economics later as a graduate student. In another sense, Koopmans might appear a surprising choice, given that Multidisciplinary Economics will signal to many a broader social science dimension. Yet Koopmans was more than general equilibrium theory, econometric theory and linear programming, although he was all these things: he had a strong sense of social purpose and was centrally concerned with the contribution theory could make to a better understanding of society, as revealed by Frankel and Sandoz (his daughters: as non-economists a nice touch!) and by Kay, in a thoughtful contribution on the nature of the market economy. Frey is another outsider providing a thought-provoking contribution: he takes the unfashionable, but convincing stance that corporate governance can learn from public governance, and in doing so uses psychology to inform the extremely narrow perspective of traditional agency theory. The contributions of further eminent outsiders, for example Buiter, coupled with those of the five, newly inaugurated full professors, Alessie, Garretsen, Kool, Schenk and Unger, complete a substantial volume of wide interest: the editors, de Gijsel and Schenk, are to be congratulated on its quality and relevance.



Keith Cowling, University of Warwick

"An important contribution to the field. Rich in ideas". ProfessorNoreena Hertz.