In economic terms, the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (MRA) is doing well. The rapid recovery after the COVID-19 crisis illustrated the resilience of the region. In 2021 and 2022, the economy grew by 7.5 and 6.9 percent, respectively. In 2023, growth slowed down to 1.2 percent, and in the coming years, the economy is expected…

Erik Verhoef is the new ambassador of the NWA Route Logistics and transport in an energetic, innovative and sustainable society (RLT from here on). RLT is one of the 25 routes within the Dutch Research Agenda (abbreviated as NWA).  Finding a way to transition to a sustainable mobility and logistics system by 2050 is the…

Jos van Ommeren has been awarded funding from The Dutch Research Council (NWO) as part of the Open Competition – SSH L.  Together with Hans Koster, Jos aims to investigate the effects of different policies on housing affordability. They will conduct a large-scale study into the affordability of housing and the effectiveness of various housing market policy measures…

Leon Bremer, Sacha den Nijs, and Henri de Groot recently published a paper on the energy efficiency gap in Energy Economics. In their research they show that firms in the Netherlands can still profitably save about 15% of their energy use by investing in energy efficiency. Even though firms have saved energy in the past,…

Congratulations Erik Verhoef! Together with Kenneth Small and Robin Lindsey, he finished a third edition of a seminal textbook on ‘The Economics of Urban Transportation’. This new edition incorporates the latest research affecting the design, implementation, pricing, and control of transport systems in towns and cities. The book offers an economic framework for understanding the…

What would you do? Say you’re about to move, but your current home hasn’t sold yet. Do you opt for a low asking price, which means a quick sale at a low(er) but acceptable price? Or do you opt for a higher asking price and wait for higher bids? Hans Koster and Jan Rouwendal investigated…

On 14 November, Stuart Donovan successfully defended his PhD thesis on Ties that bind and fray: Agglomeration economies and location choice at the Auditorium of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Promotors were Henri L.F. de Groot, Carl Koopmans, and Thomas de Graaff. Why does an increasing share of the population live in cities? Why do some cities…

On Sunday, October 29, Mathieu Steijn was interviewed by the Dutch Radio Swammerdam to talk about the question: How have the benefits of cities changed in recent decades? And who actually benefits from them? Mathieu talked about his PhD research into the changing benefits of cities, how technological revolutions have changed work and industries and…

A blog post on diversification of regions in times of crises has just been published by the London School of Economics (LSE United States Centre). It is based on the article “Technological Diversification of U.S. Cities during the Great Historical Crises” that Spatial Economics’ Mathieu Steijn wrote with Pierre-Alexandre Balland, Ron Boschma, and David Rigby…

How to handle the lack of affordable housing in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area? Simply building more is not the only solution, according to Henri de Groot in the Dutch AT5 tv programme Bouw Woon Leef.  We need to look at a more fair distribution of the number of square meters in a city, he says.…