Professor University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Biography
Mark Thissen got his Master’s degree in economics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and his PhD in economics at the University of Groningen. His PhD thesis was on the treatment of financial markets in Computable General Equilibrium modelling. After his PhD he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Twente on the economics of European economic integration and the monetary union. At the university of Groningen and at the TNO research institute he developed as a postdoc researcher a New Economic Geography (NEG) general equilibrium model for the Netherlands (the RAEM model). At the PBL Netherlands environmental assessment agency he has been working on the economic effects of infrastructure investment, interregional trade between European Nuts2 regions, and topics related to regional economic competitiveness and smart specialisation. He is specialised in the analysis of wider economic benefits of infrastructure investment in the context of agglomeration economies, the estimation of regional trade in a system of National accounts, competitiveness analysis and CGE modelling. At the present he is coordinator of the research program on The importance of clusters and networks for the competitive position of Dutch regions at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessement Agency and involved in several sub-projects for the Dutch government and international organisations in the context of this research program.
Research Interests
economics, urban economics, econometrics, spatial modeling, economic geogpraphy, statistics, public policy
Education
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / University of Groningen PhD, International Economics, 1994 – 1998, Ph.D. project: Building Financial CGE Models: Data, Parameters and the Role of Expectations; A Financial CGE Model for Egypt. Teaching: Growth Economics. Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Msc, Economics, 1988 – 1994"