Faculty of Economics and Business

What do ING and Marlies Dekkers have in common? Not much, at first sight. After all, ING, a Dutch bank, and Marlies Dekkers, a Dutch fashion house, operate in very different industries and apply completely different strategies. Through the lens of...

The market for micro-finance is booming and cross-border funding for micro-finance institutions (MFIs) is increasing. It is important for microfinance institutions to show their effect in reducing poverty to maintain long-term interest of investors.

There is growing attention to how companies engage with environmental, social and governance issues (ESG).  At the same time, institutional investors, such as pension funds, increasingly engage in dialogue with companies on these issues, but it has not...

How much do people value Facebook? By about $50 a month, according to a recent study of 2885 people by economists at the University of Groningen and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Users value Google searches at $17,530 a year, email at $8,414,...

Organic food production has become an increasingly salient issue. Retailers are increasingly focusing on organic products, and former US President Barack Obama funded a $50 million scheme to help farmers transition to organic methods. This reflects an...

Many creative organizations try to reduce formal hierarchy. They expect managers to take a less prominent role and their teams to be as self-managing as possible. In principle, this is not a bad idea, because a formal hierarchy can constrain creativity....

Is there a link between risk-taking incentives in CEO pay packages and corporate social irresponsibility? I studied this question together with colleagues from the universities of St Andrews, Essex, and Montreal. Our work recently published in The British...

Moral criticism can have a devastating effect on a business, as ING recently discovered. However, such criticism is difficult to predict, because an indignant public has double standards.

Many companies make substantial investments in research and development activities with the objective of developing new technologies and, consequently, gaining a competitive advantage in the market. However, this competitive advantage is also dependent on...

To what extent do countries use foreign aid strategically to promote their economic principles? Past studies have found that aid may be used for strategic political reasons. During the cold war for example, the United States gave aid to neighbouring...