Adriaan Soetevent appointed Professor of Microeconomics

Prof. A.R. Soetevent has been appointed Professor of Microeconomics at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen as of August 2013. Soetevent is an expert in the field of behavioural economics and market forces.

How people decide how much to donate to charity

Since his PhD research, Adriaan Soetevent has conducted laboratory and field experiments in the area of behavioural economics. One of the subjects he explored was the factors that affect the amount people decide to donate to charity, such as anonymity, payment methods and the lure of a prize. He also examined whether the influence of social groups, such as neighbours or classmates, plays a role when people make economically relevant choices.

Auctioning petrol stations did not lead to lower prices

The essence of Soetevent’s research is to assess microeconomic theory by collecting and analyzing adequate data. He is currently studying the forces at work in markets influenced by imperfect competition, such as the Dutch petrol market. An analysis of prices since 2005, for example, shows that the Dutch government’s decision to auction petrol stations along the motorways did not lead to a drop in petrol prices.

The common ground between the two areas of Soetevent’s research (market forces and behavioural economics) can be found in the question of when, and to what extent, suppliers make use of the social, cognitive and emotional factors that affect consumer choices.

Career
Soetevent (1976) was awarded a PhD with honours by the University of Groningen in 2004, after which he was appointed lecturer in Industrial Organization at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and in 2010 Professor of Empirical Microeconomics. In 2010 he also became educational director of the Tinbergen Institute , a leading European institute in the field of economic research and postgraduate education.

Veni grant

Soetevent has worked as a guest researcher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Tufts University in Boston, and has been awarded various research grants including a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for the research project Locational choice, price competition and consumer switching on networks. Soetevent’s research has been published in a range of international scientific journals, including the American Economic Review, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Public Economics, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the Journal of Applied Econometrics.

Note for the press

For more information: Prof. Adriaan Soetevent, a.r.soetevent rug.nl , tel. +31 (0)50 363 7018 (secretary’s office)