2018

When you are shopping in the supermarket, do you see friendly faces on the shelves? Giving brands a face and personality is a key part of marketing. There are familiar characters the world over, from Mr Clean, to the Michelin man. This is the research...

Prevention of burnout and recovering from highly demanding jobs is important for the wellbeing of employees and crucial for firm performance. Accordingly, finding out how to reduce stress is vital from both a business and a personal perspective. Holidays m...

How to best prevent and treat diseases at a societal level? When considering this question, your mind might initially jump to tactics like quarantine, hygiene and the provision of medicine. But what if the diseases in question do not pass from person to...

If your partner unexpected loses their job, how much does it impact your well-being? Assistant professor Milena Nikolova explains her research on the topic of spousal unemployment and happiness in the new episode of podcast Econ 050.

Not minorities are equal – some are more equal than others in the eyes of their majority culture colleagues.

According to Trump, the deficit on the United States’ current account indicates unfair trade. Trade is a key issue in the Trump administration’s international economic policy. The main strategy – imposing tariffs on imports from any country the...

Professor Bart Los and fellow researchers were recently awarded best paper for their research on the mismatch between local voting and the local economic consequences of Brexit. In short, they discovered that areas with the strongest leave vote were likely...

The faculty now has a podcast! It's called Econ 050, and you can subscribe now on iTunes.

How to compare people’s incomes internationally? How do economists assess which citizens are wealthiest, and which poorest, when costs differ all over the world?

It has been observed in many sports that the level of competition has increased over the years to an extent that we can speak nowadays of a crises at the top of these sports. Not only the number of ex aequo game results is large, also the variation in...

In interviews and autobiographies, powerful people such as business magnates, well-known politicians, or high-ranked military commanders often emphasize the importance of relying on their gut feeling when making decisions. The question that comes to mind...

Emerging market firms are increasingly visible in the global economy. A significant number of these emerging market firms expand to developed economies through cross-border acquisitions (M&A). For example, in 2007, the Tata Group of India obtained a 100...

If you want your company to become more innovative, it makes sense to set demanding targets for your employees. Setting the bar high helps employees to enjoy their work, and actually enables them to be more creative. It also pays to create a culture in...

In his Nobel Lecture in 1994, Douglass C. North emphasised that “institutions are the humanely devised constraints that structure human interaction. They are made up of formal constraints (e.g., rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (e.g.,...

On October 8, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for their contributions to long-run economic development and the role of climate change (Nordhaus) and innovation (Romer). It is hard to overstate the importance of...

This month is the 10th anniversary of the start of the 2008 financial crisis. The fall of  Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 impacted on the entire global business world, and was the trigger for  the so-called Great Recession. Economists have been...

Make America Great Again (MAGA) is key for Donald Trump’s agenda as president. An important part of his policies involves trade. With the mid-term elections approaching in November, Trump is stepping up his aggressive economic stance towards, in...

Bring sustainability into the business school mainstream by aligning with schools' existing practices: technical, political, and cultural.

Intrigued by the high quality of research as well as the multidisciplinarity at FEB, Jana Oehmichen decided to move from Germany to Groningen. She is appointed as a Professor of Organisation and Management Studies.

PhD Candidate Rachel Gifford investigates the perceived effects of different organisational models, including payment systems, of medical specialists on intergroup relations and collaborative behavior. Supervised by Eric Molleman (Organisational Behavior...

‘Look!’, Manda Broekhuis enthuses, ‘this is exactly what I’m talking about’. At the end of a fascinating conversation about the organisation and coordination of care processes, she points to a lovely glossy roadmap headed ‘Living with Us’. The poster...

FEB recently welcomed Maarten Postma to the Economics, Econometrics and Finance department as Professor of Global Health Economics. Postma is Director of the SHARE Research Institute in which FEB, the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the UMCG...

The Rosalind Franklin Fellowship is an initiative by the University of Groningen to promote the advancement of talented female researchers. Aimed to redress gender imbalances within academia, the fellowship awards tenure-track positions leading to a...

Thomas Piketty visited the Faculty of Economics and Business to deliver the Maddison Lecture in Economic Growth and Development 2018 on May 23. An economics professor at the Paris School of Economics, Piketty became a global household name in 2014 when his...

Unemployment can have damaging consequences for individuals and their families. Job loss often means lower income, increased poverty risk, and worse future employment prospects. Evidence from around the world shows that those who are unemployed have worse...

In the modern workplace, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are increasingly seen as important tools of employee satisfaction, retention, and productivity. They present an attractive investment opportunity for employees, who base their investment...

The credo ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) was a key part of the US presidential campaign by Donald Trump in 2016. International trade was an important element of reasoning behind the MAGA slogan. According to Trump, the deficit on the US current account...

What do ING and Marlies Dekkers have in common? Not much, at first sight. After all, ING, a Dutch bank, and Marlies Dekkers, a Dutch fashion house, operate in very different industries and apply completely different strategies. Through the lens of...

The market for micro-finance is booming and cross-border funding for micro-finance institutions (MFIs) is increasing. It is important for microfinance institutions to show their effect in reducing poverty to maintain long-term interest of investors.

There is growing attention to how companies engage with environmental, social and governance issues (ESG).  At the same time, institutional investors, such as pension funds, increasingly engage in dialogue with companies on these issues, but it has not...

How much do people value Facebook? By about $50 a month, according to a recent study of 2885 people by economists at the University of Groningen and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Users value Google searches at $17,530 a year, email at $8,414,...

Organic food production has become an increasingly salient issue. Retailers are increasingly focusing on organic products, and former US President Barack Obama funded a $50 million scheme to help farmers transition to organic methods. This reflects an...

Many creative organizations try to reduce formal hierarchy. They expect managers to take a less prominent role and their teams to be as self-managing as possible. In principle, this is not a bad idea, because a formal hierarchy can constrain creativity....

Is there a link between risk-taking incentives in CEO pay packages and corporate social irresponsibility? I studied this question together with colleagues from the universities of St Andrews, Essex, and Montreal. Our work recently published in The British...

Moral criticism can have a devastating effect on a business, as ING recently discovered. However, such criticism is difficult to predict, because an indignant public has double standards.

Many companies make substantial investments in research and development activities with the objective of developing new technologies and, consequently, gaining a competitive advantage in the market. However, this competitive advantage is also dependent on...

To what extent do countries use foreign aid strategically to promote their economic principles? Past studies have found that aid may be used for strategic political reasons. During the cold war for example, the United States gave aid to neighbouring...

Professor Bart Los has been working with an international team on calculating what the impact of Brexit will be on different regions and industries. FEB Blog caught up with him to ask why students should pay attention to this research.

Is access to finance sufficient on its own to bring people out of poverty? Or is there a need for business training to complement financial access? In a recent paper we investigated this in a large micro-finance institution, Tao Yeu May, in Vietnam.

Since fiscal policies in several countries across the world have become unsustainable, it has become inevitable that governments should reduce their indebtedness. Consequently, policy debates no longer focus on the question whether government indebtedness...

It is seen as the way for organizations to strengthen their market position, acquire knowledge and become more innovative: an alliance with a partner. Alliances can have many advantages, but organizations do not always benefit from one. Experience has...

Climate change and animal welfare are a cause for concern for many Dutch people. They realize that their daily portion of meat isn’t really helping on either front. And yet we (and that includes me) have not signed up in droves for the National Meat Free...

Assistant professor Yingjie Yuan explains her research in management and organisation psychology in this new video.

Is no deal really better than a bad deal? Economists at the University of Groningen's Faculty of Economics and Business used our databases of trade flows between European regions to find out.

Assistant Professor of Operations Ward Romeijnders was awarded a Veni grant  for his project, “Planning for the unknown. Towards optimal decisions under uncertainty.” These personal Veni grants are worth up to a maximum of €250,000 and enable talented...

Assistant Professor of Economics Artūras was awarded a Veni grant  for his project, “ We do not live in a bubble: economic shocks in misspecified panel data models ”. The personal Veni grants are worth up to a maximum of €250,000 and enable talented...

A good bottle of wine with an unusual label stands proudly on the table. It says ‘Cheers!’, followed by a summary of an academic article. The message couldn’t be clearer. Marijke Leliveld and Hans Risselada have something to celebrate. Their...

After spending time in the Netherlands for her PhD, Yingjie Yuan spent several months at Penn State University, only to come back to the Netherlands. She accepted a position as Assistant Professor in Management and Organization Psychology and started her...

Robert Feenstra is a Professor at the Department of Economics, University of California, Davis, and holder of the C. Bryan Cameron Distinguished Chair in International Economics. He gave a keynote address on ‘The ‘China Shock’ in Trade Reconsidered’...

Dirk Pilat is Deputy Director of the Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation at the OECD. Prior to his work at the OECD, he earned his PhD in economics in 1994 at the University of Groningen. He spoke at the GGDC Conference 2017 on the OECD’s...

Ingvild Almås is a professor at the Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), and currently a visiting associate professor at IIES, Stockholm University. Almås’ research focuses on economic inequalities. She delivered a paper on...

The Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) was founded in 1992 within the Economics Department of the University of Groningen. It recently marked 25 years since its founding, with a jubilee conference on the themes that have long been key to the...