Economics and management (English)

1927-1988

The history of the Tilburg School of Economics and Management (TiSEM) goes back to the founding of the Roman Catholic Business School in 1927. This foundation signified, first and foremost, an important step forward in the emancipation of the Catholics in the south of the Netherlands. In its study program, its founder, priest and scholar Martinus Cobbenhagen, always made connections between concrete economic realities and social and ethical goals, and between individual and social interests. Subjects such as Philosophy of Sociology and Labor Law were compulsory subjects for all students. Courses in Psychology and Empirical Sociology were later to be added to the curriculum. In the prewar years, the number of students grew to about 250 a year. After the War, these enrolments rose up to 700, about one-fifth to one-sixth of the total nationwide number of economics students.

Booming decades

When the economy began to boom in the fifties and the population exploded, higher education also grew, and the Tilburg Business School expanded its base with the Faculties of Law (1963) and Sociology (1963) and the Sub-Faculty of Psychology (1971). Student numbers then rose rapidly to almost 5,000 in 1980, two-thirds of whom were economics students. In the postwar decades, Dirk Schouten and Ad Kolnaar gained a lot of administrative influence within the Faculty and outside it. Schouten was appointed Professor in 1954 and served as a crown-appointed member on the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands (SER) between 1958 and 1992. Like a great many other economists at the time, he was keen to prevent the economic failures of the thirties. Kolnaar also believed that economics, as a science, should be searching for solutions to social problems. After obtaining his doctoral degree under the supervision of Schouten, Kolnaar was appointed to a professorship in 1971. He too held many executive and advisory positions both within and outside the University and also served as a crown-appointed member on the SER. The eighties meant a watershed in the orientation of the Faculty’s research efforts. Just like Schouten and Kolnaar, Theo van de Klundert, Dean from 1984-1987, was closely involved in social issues, in his advisory capacity, for instance, to the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). Van de Klundert was also the first Tilburg professor to be published in international journals, including the American Economic Review. The Koopmans Building, the TiSEM home since 1971

1988-2017

In the early eighties, the research achievements of the then Faculty of Economic Sciences (FEW) were not looking good. This was not only due to budget cuts but also to the virtual absence of an international publication culture, except for the econometrists. Jaap van Duijn, business management expert at the then Delft College of Technology, wrote in 1981: “What is the matter with the Tilburgers, we believe, is that they publish too much in Dutch and too little in English. If this is what you do, your fame will also be contained within national boundaries.” In 1985, the Education Minister appointed a feasibility committee to examine the nature and range of economics research in the Netherlands and to evaluate its quality. This committee concluded that, from an international point of view, its productivity was below par.

Research themes

Inspired by the econometrists and with starter funding from the Ministry, the FEW then proceeded to found research institute CentER. CentER aimed to “bring together a group of excellent researchers in a center for advanced economic research of international significance, whose repute and appeal will have a stimulating effect on the practice of economics in the Netherlands.” CentER appointed four new research professors (Anton Barten, Eric van Damme, Rick van der Ploeg and John Driffill) and liaised with renowned academic economists from all over the Netherlands as fellows. Research themes were generated by the researchers’ shared interests. Foreign staff proved to be prepared to come as visitors. And this is how CentER managed to build a thriving research culture, founded on people with ambition and commitment. CentER grew into a research school, developing graduate programs in Economics (1991, the first of its kind in the Netherlands) and Management (1992). In 1994, the FEW decided to reinforce its business economics research. CentER intensified its relations with foreign institutions, such as Toulouse, LSE, UCL, Stockholm, Mannheim and Brussels. A scientific council was established, which in part set the course CentER was to take. In 1995, the national research evaluation committee concluded: “The average quality is good. […] There are no weak programs.” In 1998, CentER celebrated its tenth anniversary with a conference featuring Nobel Prize winners Aumann and Sargent. By that time, 138 scientists were CentER staff members and 88 PhD students were working in nine research programs, covering the width and breadth of the field of economics.

Growth and turmoil

Late 1999, the chairs of the five business economics departments expressed their concern about the affordability of the FEW’s ambitions, the lopsided distribution of funds between general economics and business economics and the balance between fundamental research and other branches. The ensuing departure of Professor Kapteyn, who played a lead role in the Faculty’s internationalization efforts, caused a lot of turmoil. From 2002 onwards, CentER’s leadership was in the hands of Lans Bovenberg as its Director and Theo Nijman as Vice-Dean for Research. This period was characterized by diminishing CentER autonomy, widening of the Faculty’s research scope, a steady improvement of Business Economics and investments being made in a fair number of novel initiatives, such as Netspar (pensions), TIBER (Behavioral Economics and Psychology), TILEC (Law and Economics) and TSC (sustainability). Since the nineties, the scientific output of the Faculty’s researchers has remained constant, but its publication quality has clearly gone up, as measured by citation figures and the impact factor of journals. In the 2012-2016 period, the TiSEM research groups were ranked as follows:

Marketing: 7th worldwide and 1st in Europe

Operations Research: 38th and 4th, respectively

Accounting: 40th and 1st

Finance: 42nd and 6th

Economics: 45th and 11th

Management: 39th and 7th

Econometrics: 74th and 13th

Information and Supply Chain Management: 150th and 21st