NETSPAR – Network for Studies on Pensions, Ageing and Retirement at Tilburg University

Netherlands

Tilburg University, aims to bridge the gaps between pension practitioners and pension scientists. The first group consists of representatives of ministries, supervising agencies and other civil service institutions, pension funds, pension providers, insurance companies, banks, and asset & liability management companies. The second group consists of university pension researchers affiliated with Tilburg University.

The core values of Tilburg University are independence, accessibility for new entrants, and openness to dialogue and interaction between stakeholders in the pension world. Tilburg University recognizes the importance of diverse types of knowledge, various disciplines, and methodological approaches. It does not support particular policy positions, but is instead dedicated to promoting a wider understanding of the economic and social implications of pensions and retirement. It strives to develop and effectively disseminate unbiased research output among public policymakers, professionals and trustees in financial institutions and the academic community.

Tilburg University endeavors to bring the pension debate to a higher level of sophistication and to create highquality solutions for present and future challenges with respect to an aging society. In this way Tilburg University wants to safeguard sustainable pension and insurance systems that share risks equitably and efficiently. Tilburg University has formulated for the Netherlands a national research agenda on pensions for 2011-2014 and coordinates its execution. In total 200 senior researchers (120 Dutch and 80 non-Dutch) are affiliated with Tilburg University

For more detailed information see the Netspar website.

Personnel involved in the project and main tasks

Theo Nijman will take part as senior researcher in Task 1 of Pension systems, savings and financial education: Intragenerational equity
Lans Bovenberg will take part as senior researcher in Task 2 of Pension systems, savings and financial education: Intergenerational risk sharing
Arthur van Soest will take part as senior researcher in Task 3 of Pension systems, savings and financial education: Effective communication of pension risks
Frank van der Duyn Schouten will be responsible for the management of Pension systems, savings and financial education.
Postdocs: on each of the three Tasks within Pension systems, savings and financial education a post-doc will be appointed for a period of at least 6 months.

Short profile and previous relevant experience

Lans Bovenberg obtained his Ph.D. in 1984 at the University of California, Berkeley. He started his working career as an economist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. and became a professor of economics at Tilburg University in 1998, where he served as scientific director for the Center for Economic Research (CentER). In 2004, Bovenberg won the Dutch Spinoza prize. With the prize money, he founded the research network Netspar (Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement), in which various pension funds, insurance companies, public agencies and universities participate.For these entrepreneurial activities, he was elected by Science Alliance as the most entrepreneurial scientist in the social sciences in 2006.

Bovenberg received the Hudig-Langeveldt prize for his important work on pensions and aging. This prize is awarded to scientists whose work has made an important contribution to the financial industry in the Netherlands. Bovenberg is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2009, a member of Academia Europe since 2011 and fellow of the European Economic Association. He received honorary doctorates of Ghent University (2008) and the University of St. Gallen (2010). He is knight in the order of the Dutch lion (since 2011). He has been research fellow of CEPR (London) since 1994 and CESIfo (Munich) since 2002.

Arthur van Soest is professor of Econometrics at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and scientific advisor of Netspar. He was a senior economist at RAND, California, from 2003 until 2007. From 1992 until 1997, he had a research fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has a Ph.D. in Econometrics from Tilburg University. He had visiting positions at University College London, Sydney University, and University of MOPACT, 320333, 10 December 2012 Bristol and is a currently affiliated with the University of Sankt-Gallen as a guest professor. He is affiliated with the RAND Corporation as an adjunct affiliate researcher, is a research fellow at IZA in Bonn and a research professor at DIW in Berlin.

Until 2008 Van Soest was the Dutch country team leader of several projects funded by the European Commission related to the collection of the SHARE data (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) and was the overall coordinator of COMPARE, a large scale project to collect and analyze self-assessment and anchoring vignette data on several domains of well-being in ten European countries, funded by the European Commission. He also coordinated an ESF Forward Look project on Ageing, Health and Pensions, aimed at designing a research agenda for the economics of aging for the next ten years. Van Soest is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2012.

Theo Nijman is Professor of Finance at Tilburg University and Scientific Director of Netspar. He holds a PhD in Econometrics from the Free University at Amsterdam. He was Scientific Director of CentER for Economic Research at Tilburg University from 2000-2004. He was Board member of the European Finance Association from 2001-2005 and Academic Coordinator of Inquire Europe since 2001.

Frank van der Duyn Schouten is professor of Operations Research at Tilburg University and chairman of the Board of Netspar. He is Dutch country team leader of SHARE and member of the Management Team of SHAREERIC. He is board member of the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the Dutch Research Council NWO.

Postdocs: Three post-docs will be hired for at least a period of 6 months.

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