Graduate School
Prospective students
Eight good reasons to come to Tinbergen Institute
1. A top-ranked institute with top lecturers
Tinbergen Institute is the research institute and graduate school in economics and finance of Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Amsterdam and VU University Amsterdam and is usually not ranked separately from the three universities participating in it. However, if it were ranked based on the publications of its fellows (professors), it would invariably end up near the very top of Europe and in the top-20 worldwide.
The reason that Tinbergen Institute is not ranked has to do with the fact that it does not employ its own fellows; the three economics departments employ the professors, and TI selects fellows from the professors based on their research output. However, the institute‘ ranking based on the output of its fellows is highly relevant to prospective students. TI‘s fellows organize and govern the graduate program, they teach the MPhil program‘s many courses, they organize and participate in the institute‘s research seminars and conferences, and they are all are available as potential MPhil and PhD thesis advisors. Thus, the fellows form the single-most relevant academic community for TI‘s graduate students.
In 2003, Kalaitzidakis, Mamuneas and Stengos present a ranking of the top 200 economics departments worldwide (
Kalaitzidakis et al.
).
This ranking is based on published research in a list of 30 top
research journals in economics. Because nearly all of the active
researchers in economics at the three universities are fellows of
TI, it is reasonable to take the published research output of the
three departments together as the TI score. It would take TI to the
first place in Europe and to rank 15 worldwide - just behind UCLA
and well ahead of Wisconsin and Brown.
Check the list of overview of publications by TI's research fellows in high quality economics journals over the period 2002-2011.
[Reason 2: Good job placement prospects]
Frank Kleibergen
Professor of Economics at Brown University
Tinbergen Institute alumnus (1994) & associate research fellow
The quality of economic research in the Netherlands has improved considerably in recent decades. Tinbergen Institute has been instrumental in that process, and it is now one of the top graduate schools in Europe. Many of its alumni have established outstanding careers in business and academia, both in the Netherlands and abroad. This is further testimony to TI's quality.