News | July 21, 2014

Veni Grants awarded to Fellows Hans Koster, Jan Stoop and Thomas Buser

TI fellows Hans Koster, Jan Stoop and Thomas Buser are awarded Veni grants by the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).

NWO awards Veni grants to outstanding academics who obtained their PhD in the past three years and display a striking talent for scientific research. Winners of a Veni grant receive a grant of € 250,000 for a 3 years research project. In 2014, a total of 1086 researchers submitted an application and 152 of them received a Veni grant. That is equivalent to an award rate of 14%.

Hans Koster

TI Fellow Hans Koster was awarded a Veni grant by NWO for his research on ‘Planning, places, prices and politics: the economics of spatial planning policy’. This project will analyse the economic reasons for applying spatial planning. By making use of theoretical models and unique microdata Hans will analyse the influence of height restrictions, heritage protection, and social housing on the urban economy.

Hans Koster (1987) is an assistant professor at the department of spatial economics of the VU University Amsterdam He defended his PhD thesis in March 2013 at the VU University Amsterdam on ‘The Internal Structure of Cities’ and was awarded the prestigious August Lösch Prize 2014 for his dissertation. Hans is also affiliated as Research Associate with the Spatial Economnics Research Centre at the London School of Economics. He published in the Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Jan Stoop

TI fellow Jan Stoop was awarded a Veni grant by NWO for his research on the relationship between human behaviour tested in laboratory experiments and in field experiments. NWO awards Veni grants to outstanding academics who obtained their PhD in the past three years and display a striking talent for scientific research. Winners of a Veni grant receive a grant of € 250,000 for a 3 years research project.

Jan Stoop’s main research is concerned with the measurement of social preferences of humans, by conducting lab experiments and field experiments, in a ‘natural environment’. In Jan’s Veni research project, the tension between the lab and every day circumstances will be addressed by systematically comparing results from experiments that step-by-step become more ‘real’. The results from the comparison, revealing which elements add to the external validity of an experiment, are fed back to a new laboratory design, aiming to increase its relevance.

Jan Stoop is an assistant professor at the department of applied economics of the Erasmus School of Economics (EUR). His research interests include behavioral economics, experimental economics and field experiments. Jan published in one of the top journals in economics, namely the Journal of Political Economy (2012) and in Experimental Economics (2014), His forthcoming publication is in Experimental Economics on ‘Time as a medium of reward in three social preference experiments’ (with Charles Noussair). In 2013, the Erasmus University Rotterdam awarded him an EUR Fellowship, for talented researchers.

Thomas Buser

TI fellow Thomas Buser was also awarded a Veni grant by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) for his research project ‘Using behavioural economics to understand gender differences in career choices: the causes and effects of the gender difference in competitiveness’.

A significant part of gender differences in labour market outcomes is explained by gender differences in academic and professional career choices. For example, few women pick a career in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics. Recently, experiments in behavioural economics have suggested a new explanation for these differences: women tend to avoid competitive environments while men are attracted to them. However, the application of this insight to study gender differences in career choices is still in its infancy and the determinants of competitiveness at the individual level are largely unknown.

In Thomas’ Veni project he will develop an experimentally validated survey instrument to measure competitiveness in large-scale panel data. The aim is to estimate the proportion of gender differences in career outcomes that can be explained by gender differences in competitive attitudes. In Buser, Niederle and Oosterbeek (2014), we show that an experimental measure of competitiveness explains a significant part of gender differences in studying science. In a follow-up experiment, Thomas will research whether being in a competitive study environment makes people more competitive and also investigate whether competitiveness pushes people into a more successful career path or whether it causes them to overreach. In a series of lab experiments, Thomas’ project tackles the origins of gender differences in competitiveness.

Thomas Buser is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His research interests include experimental economics, behavioral economics, lab and field experiments and education. Recently, Thomas published with TI fellow Hessel Oosterbeek, et. al in one of the top journals in economics, namely the Quarterley Journal of Economics (2014). He also published in journals as Games and Economic behavior and Experimental Economics.