Full Professor of International Environmental Economics

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam School of Business and Economics offers the position of

Full Professor of International Environmental Economics.

Location: AMSTERDAM
FTE: 0.8 - 1

The appointed professor needs to have the qualifications to perform the three main tasks listed below.

1. To do research in the field of international environmental economics, covering the following aspects:

• to yearly publish research results in prestigious international peer-reviewed journals
• to enhance research quality of the research group involved
• to make a significant strategic contribution to the further development of the Department’s research in environmental economics
• to acquire research projects and programs
• to externally represent and profile the Department of Spatial Economics and the School

2. To promote environmental economics education (both regular and non-regular education), while also covering the following aspects:

• to contribute to the educational programs of the School of Business and Economics
• to further develop the environmental economics program jointly with colleagues in the School
• high quality teaching

3. Taking care of a fair share of administrative responsibilities.

4. To participate actively in the public debate about environmental policies.

• The appointed professor is a prominent researcher in broadly defined environmental economics with a convincing profile in international environmental economics. This is reflected by an academic doctoral degree and by the high quality and number of publications in international academic journals. He or she enjoys an excellent reputation in international scientific networks and would easily qualify as a Research Fellow at the Tinbergen Institute (see http://www.tinbergen.nl/research-groups-researchers/tinbergen-fellow-requirements/ )
• The professor should have the capacity to lead the group of environmental economics as demonstrated by senior administrative responsibilities, and to seek cooperation across the School and the University
• The appointed professor should have a promising track record of acquisition of research projects and programs such as from national Research Councils and other external funding agencies / organizations.He or she has the capacity to initiate research and to guide and supervise researchers
• The professor should have a demonstrated interest in theoretical, empirical, and policy relevant research, taking into account the latest developments in economics and employing, where appropriate, plural approaches to research questions. Furthermore, the professor sees clear value added in the possibility of cooperation with urban, regional, transport, and development economists at the Department and School
• He or she has the ability to present the results of his/her research in an accessible way, for academic and non-academic audiences. He or she is also willing to participate in public debates on environmental economics
• The professor has a clear vision on teaching, has ample teaching experience at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and is an inspiring teacher with excellent results. The professor has the skills to further develop the educational programs of the Department of Spatial Economics and the Faculty, including executive education. The professor holds a senior teaching qualification (University Teaching Training Programme or an equivalent)
• Insofar as he or she does not have a command of the Dutch language, he or she is willing to develop a working knowledge of the language within a reasonable period of time

A challenging position in a socially involved organization. On full-time basis the remuneration amounts to a minimum gross monthly salary of €5,843 (H2)

and a maximum €8,508 (H2), depending on your education and experience. The job profile: is based on the university job ranking system and is vacant for at least 0.8 FTE.

Additionally, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers excellent fringe benefits and various schemes and regulations to promote a good work/life balance, such as:

• a maximum of 41 days of annual leave based on full-time employment
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• solid pension scheme (ABP)
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package

The ambition of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is clear: to contribute to a better world through outstanding education and ground-breaking research. We strive to be a university where personal development and commitment to society play a leading role. A university where people from different disciplines and backgrounds collaborate to achieve innovations and to generate new knowledge. Our teaching and research encompass the entire spectrum of academic endeavor – from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences through to the life sciences and the medical sciences.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is home to more than 26,000 students. We employ over 4,600 individuals. The VU campus is easily accessible and located in the heart of Amsterdam’s Zuidas district, a truly inspiring environment for teaching and research.

Diversity
We are an inclusive university community. Diversity is one of our most important values. We believe that engaging in international activities and welcoming students and staff from a wide variety of backgrounds enhances the quality of our education and research. We are always looking for people who can enrich our world with their own unique perspectives and experiences.

School of Business and Economics
The School of Business and Economics (SBE) provides high-quality education and excellent research in business administration and economics with a focus on contributing to the social, economic and ecological challenges of our time. Whether it is the use of robots in society or big data, labour market participation or flexibility in the labour market, traffic jams or the housing market, flash crashes in the stock market or choice behaviour in gambling, leadership or change management: we believe in goal-oriented scientific research and understand that progress in academics, the business community and society is achieved through cooperation, openness and social responsibility.

At SBE, all of our highly-motivated colleagues work together closely in a stimulating, dynamic and international environment to achieve our collective goal of encouraging society to make informed choices. Approximately 4,200 Bachelor’s and Master’s students and 1,700 executive students are enrolled at the School, and employs roughly 500 people.

Department of Spatial Economics
Spatial Economics refers to the analysis of economic phenomena that have a clear spatial dimension, and does so in a way that does justice to this dimension. In the Department’s name, the term reflects the collective of the fields of Regional, Urban, Transport and Environmental Economics. Academic research in these fields typically addresses topics of high policy relevance, including spatial interactions and quality in urban and rural areas, the performance of transport networks, and spatial dimensions of environmental quality and climate change. To understand and rigorously analyse such issues, one must often establish relationships between diverse phenomena such as urbanization, economics, migration, trade, infrastructure, transport, location choice, accessibility, and environment. These phenomena typically involve spatial distance and spatial externalities and it is for this reason that these naturally combine into one Department. As a subfield of economics, its perspective is primarily economic, but it often also involves a good understanding and appreciation of knowledge and methods from complementary disciplines such as geography, transportation science, urban studies, environmental management, and spatial planning. Within the broad field of the economic sciences, spatial economics is relatively close to applied welfare economics. It contributes to the development and makes intensive use of techniques and methods from modern microeconomic, econometric, and macroeconomic toolboxes; both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective.
The Department has been successful in achieving substantial external funding for its research, in addition to the funding from the university. The share of outside sources has over the past years been around 50%. Main parts of the outside sources stem from NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) and ERC personal grants programmes, and national programmes for strategic research on urban dynamics, sustainable transport, climate change, etc; as well as other sources including EU project funds.
The research themes of the Department are also the key components of the Master programmes STREEM (Spatial, Transport and Environmental Economics) and UNIGIS (a distance-learning programme in geographical information systems). The group’s international orientation is illustrated by the emphasis on excellent research, leading to publications in international top-journals (including general interest economics journals) and by the international recognition in terms of prestigious grants; visibility in international associations such as CEPR, UEA, EAERE, ITEA and RSAI; and editorships, or memberships of editorial boards, of leading field journals. The Department’s thematic orientation makes it a natural fit with three of the four profiling themes that the VU has: Governance for Society, Science for Sustainability, and Connected World in so far as it encompasses spatial interactions.

Environmental economics
Environmental economics is to be understood as including the study of renewable as well as non-renewable resource economics, from a theoretical, empirical, and policy perspective. Climate change economics, the economics of biodiversity, and issues at the intersection of environmental and development economics such as adaptation to climate change and a zero-carbon economy, present examples where resource and environmental aspects are interrelated. Environmental economics studies environmental problems from an economic perspective. It applies insights from economics and natural sciences to tackle such problems. This position in international environmental economics will make a contribution to our understanding of cross-border environmental problems by improving upon the description and analysis of interactions between environmental and economic systems and providing policy makers with sound scientific insights from these analyses.
Important tasks of the appointed professor are the development of a research program that combines environmental economics with other subfields of economics to find new insights that addresses climate change as the main environmental challenge of our time, and the development of research-informed teaching and outreach programmes that build environmental economics literacy in society and train the next generation of business leaders, policy makers, and researchers.  Topics may include carbon border taxes, pollution havens, transitioning away from dependence on non-renewables, as well as externalities deriving from (or causing) the slow implementation of climate policy such as the need of (developing) countries to adapt to a changing climate, the challenges of weaning countries off continued dependence of resource exports, environmental and development challenges arising in the mining of metals and minerals used in clean energy technology, clean technology adoption through foreign direct investment, climate-induced migration, policy uncertainty, institutional path dependency, energy poverty, corporate social responsibility, and green finance.

Are you interested in this position? Please apply via the application button and upload your curriculum vitae and cover letter until

Applications received by e-mail will not be processed.

Vacancy questions
If you have any questions regarding this vacancy, you may contact:

Name: Prof. dr. E.T. Verhoef
Position: Head of the department
E-mail: [email protected]

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