I would define my family in light of the lasting integration of Europe, which began with three Catholic Founding Fathers in 1945. When a handful of visionaries – Adenauer, De Gasperi, and Schuman – put us on the path to an integrated Europe; to the peaceful borderless region that we live in today....
Emerging Markets is the latest specialisation in the bachelor’s programmes in International Business and Economics and Business Economics at Maastricht University. New as it may be, it is already popular. It has even spurred the development of a follow-up programme to be launched in September 2018: the Master in Economics and Strategy in Emerging Markets. “Emerging economies are changing the world radically,” says Dr. Kaj Thomsson, coordinator of the bachelor’s specialisation. “This ...
China, once the final resting place for half the world’s trash, has just banned the import of certain plastic, paper and textile waste. Western countries are scrambling to shift ‘the problem’ elsewhere – but there could be another way. They could invest more in the circular economy, which would also help them achieve the 2030 Agenda. But what exactly is the circular economy? Sustainable development refers to a process of economic growth and development, whereby the needs of the present are met w...
Strangers who share one car. A network around a drug addicted youth who offer care themselves, under the guidance of a professional. A person paying back an hour of painting window frames with an hour of working in someone else’s garden. These are all examples of a more social economy, which is growing slowly but surely, also in the Netherlands. At Maastricht University, Prof. René Kemp is studying how this transition from an old to a new economy is taking shape worldwide. Working together to do...
Researchers from China and Europe met in Maastricht on 24 April 2017 to discuss research related to the SINCERE project, or ‘Sino-European Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency’. The workshop was hosted by UNU-MERIT researchers Prof. René Kemp and Dr. Serdar Türkeli and participants included Yong Geng from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; Beijia Huang from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, China; Raimund Bleischwit...
The Journal of Population Economics, an independent and international quarterly journal that publishes original theoretical and applied research in all areas of population economics, has been hosted by the ‘POP Centre‘ at UNU-MERIT since April 2016. Issue 1/2017, published on 29 October 2016, marks an important landmark for the journal, as it enters its 30th year of successful academic service. We celebrate three decades of dedication in publishing outstanding theoretical and insight...
Two senior fellows, Prof. Luc Soete and Dr. Alessio Brown, recently featured in articles by the Financial Times and T-Systems magazine. Both wrote about the future world of work amid accelerating technological change — touching on the risks and rewards and the assumptions and disruptions. In a guest post for the FT, Prof. Soete explored the challenges posed to labour markets by growing automation — a notion he roundly dispelled as a red herring. “Historically the evidence of di...
Timo Goeschl, Heidelberg University Date: 7 April 2016 The anticipation of international failure to stop climate change has given so-called “Geoengineering” approaches new respectability. Geoengineering is the deliberate large-scale modification of the Earth’s climate system with the intention of preventing or limiting dangerous climate change. Its implementation depends on a family of technologies that are yet to be developed. The nature and scale of Geoengineering raises both normative and str...
The Arab region has been a cradle of economic growth in recent decades. While this growth has clearly brought in wealth, there are still countless questions about the characteristics, constraints and implications of the region’s systems of innovation. Do these systems even exist in the Arab region? How do prevailing economic structures affect regional innovation? Is the presence of natural resources a help or a hindrance? A new book on the ‘Economic Systems of Innovation in the Arab ...
Both the EU and China have policies to promote recycling, energy saving, and the green economy. Yet relevant knowledge and data are in short supply, not only on the economic implications but also on how policy can influence drivers like technological innovation. A new three-year project entitled ‘SINCERE’ will gather European and Chinese researchers to fill these gaps. Prof. René Kemp and Eva Bartekova joined the first Sino-European workshop on resource efficiency (RE) and circular economy (CE) ...