Professors of the PhD Program (PPP)

Lieven Baele is a Professor of International Finance at Tilburg University. His research interests cover various fields within international empirical asset pricing, such as: linking macro to finance models, emerging market finance, and asset market comovements. His recent work focuses on modelling correlations between international asset markets, both in good and bad times (i.e. contagion, flights-to-safety), on modelling the equity term structure of expected returns, and on how behavioral models such as cumulative prospect theory can explain various asset pricing puzzles. He has published several articles in the Review of Financial Studies, as well as in the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, amongst others. Lieven teaches risk management and global asset allocation at various levels and institutions, and has been a consultant to both policy institutions (ECB; European Commission) and multiple financial firms.

Joost Driessen is Professor of Finance at Tilburg University since 2009. From 2001 to 2009 he held a position at the University of Amsterdam. He has published extensively in top finance journals (Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics), and has received several grants for his academic work, including a VENI and VIDI grant. He has also been involved in various applied research projects for financial and governmental institutions. To this date, ten PhD students have graduated under his supervision. Joost has been head of the Finance Department both at Tilburg University (2012-2016) and University of Amsterdam (2008-2009). He is currently Vice-Dean Research at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. His current research interests include liquidity and asset pricing, derivative markets, corporate bonds and credit risk, and long-term portfolio choice.

Stephan Hollander is a Professor of Financial Accounting at Tilburg University. He has been a visiting research scholar at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the University of Melbourne, and an auditor at Deloitte. His research focuses on the role corporate communication plays in capital markets functioning efficiently, and on how regulatory and legislative changes and technological developments influence firms’ information environments. Much of his work uses methods in computational linguistics. For example, a simple pattern-based sequence-classification approach provides new insights on political risks firms are facing. Professor Hollander has published his research in the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Frank de Jong is Professor of Finance. His research focuses on risk management tools for financial institutions. He has done work on the term structure of interest rates and derivatives, and currently works on questions around valuation and risk management for pension funds. Other fields of interest are international finance, including investments in emerging markets, market microstructure and liquidity. He has published in many international journals and is a regular referee for finance journals.

Philip Joos is Professor of accounting at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management (TiSEM) and TIAS School for Business and Society. He studied business economics at the University of Ghent, obtained his Master of Science in Finance from the Vlerick School of Management, a Master in Statistics and PhD in Business from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University (US). His research is situated in the area of empirical financial accounting. The dissertation research at Stanford University focused on earnings prediction and accounting-based equity valuation, with a specific application in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. He also investigated the role of earnings and R&D quality measures in a real options valuation model. He conducted several studies on default risk assessment, also in the context of initial public offerings. Recently he is involved in several research projects on the effects of the implementation of IFRS, and on issues related to corporate social responsibility reporting. Prof. Joos published in international academic journals such as the Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, the European Accounting Review, Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting, Journal of International Accounting Research, and Financial Management. He is a member of the several editorial boards. He is past-President of the European Accounting Association (President June 2017-19).

Xavier Martin (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is the Research Professor and Professor of Strategy, International Business and Innovation in the Department of Management. He was previously on the faculty of New York University (Stern School of Business) and Columbia University (Graduate School of Business). His research examines how corporate strategies, interfirm relationships, and knowledge-based assets affect each other and jointly affect firm performance. His papers have appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, the Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, the Journal of International Business Studies and Research Policy, among others. He is a recipient of multiple research awards, including the Best International Paper Award (now Dexter Award) from the Academy of Management, both the Haynes Prize for Best Paper and the Richard N. Farmer Best Dissertation Award (now Peter J. Buckley and Mark Casson AIB Dissertation Award) from the Academy of International Business, and several Best Paper / Best Student Paper awards from the Strategic Management Society and the Academy of Management. He serves on multiple editorial boards including for the Strategic Management Journal, and served previously as Guest Editor for the Journal of International Business Studies. Following election in 2015 to the leadership track of the Strategic Management division of the Academy of Management (formerly Business Policy & Strategy division), he currently serves as its Division Past Chair. He has served as member of the Board of the Strategic Management Society, the chair of its Competitive Strategy Interest Group, and the Co-Chair of its Best Paper Award. He also served previously on the executive committees of two Academy of Management divisions (Business Policy & Strategy and Technology & Innovation Management).He has taught courses in strategic management, international business, innovation management and research methods at the Bachelor, M.Sc., Full-Time through Executive MBA and Ph.D. levels. He is the recipient of Best Teacher and Best Course awards from New York University and Tilburg University.

Niels Noorderhaven is Professor of International Management at Tilburg University. Previously he has been head of the Department of Management and vice dean Education of the Faculty of Economics & Management, and presently he is associate dean for Internationalization. He does research in the area of international collaboration between firms, focusing on alliances, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions. His work has been published in, among other journals, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, and Organization Science. He is also interested in project management, and in inductive qualitative research and case studies. Recent work has had as empirical contexts the airline industry, the shipbuilding industry, and the process industry.

Carol Xiaojuan Ou is Professor of Information Management and the Head of Management Department. Her research interests include digital transformation, applied business intelligence, computer-mediated communication, social commerce, smart recommendation agents and knowledge management. She works closely with industry such as in the collaboration with Microsoft, Ernst & Young, ING, European Air Transport Command, etc. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, Information Technology & People, Journal of AIS, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Information Systems Journal, Journal of IT Management, and MIS Quarterly, among others. Carol is serving as a senior editor for Information Systems Journals, Information & Management, as well as IT & People. She chaired many tracks in the major conferences on Information Systems such as ICIS, ECIS and PACIS. She is also a Certified IS Auditor and an Academic Advocate of IS Audit and Control Association.

Luc Renneboog is Professor of Corporate Finance at CentER, Tilburg University, and Head of the Department of Finance. He is also visiting Professor at the University of Ghent. He is a research member of TILEC (Tilburg Law and Economics Center) and ECGI (European Corporate Governance Institute, Brussels). Before joining Tilburg, Luc was on faculty of the University of Leuven and Oxford University. He also held visiting positions at the London Business School, Cambridge University, HEC Paris, Venice University, University Paris-Dauphine, University of Cardiff, CUNEF, and European University Institute (Florence). He has graduated from the University of Leuven with a BSc/MSc in Business Engineering and with a BA in philosophy, from the University of Chicago with an MBA, and from the London Business School with a PhD in Financial Economics. His research interests span: Corporate finance: corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, dividend policy, remuneration contracting, network analysis, Corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing, the economics of art, markets for art, diamonds and other alternative investments, Experimental economics: managerial overconfidence, bonus systems, on these topics, he has published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, American Economic Review, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Law and Economics, Review of Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Banking and Finance, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, and others.

Anne-Françoise Rutkowski is Professor in Management of Information. She is the Director of the Graduate Study (PPP) and Academic Director of two international programs in the field of Information Management at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management (TiSEM). She is versed in cognitive psychology and research methods. Her research interests and publications bridged Information Systems and human sciences in addressing topics such as decision making, information processing, attention, emotion, IT governance, overload/underload, work substitution, corporate social responsibility, artificial intelligence, threat globalization and cybersecurity. She is particularly interested in socially responsible use of Information Technology. Applications of her work focus on the impact of Information Technology on High Reliability Organization in the Dutch public and private sectors (e.g., hospitals, police force, banking sector). Results of her research have been published in journals such as IEEE software, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Journal of the AIS, Small Group Research, Surgical Endoscopy, Group Decision and Negotiation, Decision Support System and MIS Quarterly. She served on various editorial boards including the MIS Quarterly. Her work has been recognized with various professionals and academic awards (e.g., Philips award for innovation in education, second best paper AMCIS Puerto Rico). She serves as panel-member of the Research Grant Council in Hong Kong since 2014 as well as of the Academy of Finland since 2015. Recently, she co-authored a book entitled Cognitive and Emotional Overload: The dark side of Information Technology with Carol Saunders from University of Central Florida (Routledge, 2018).

Sjak Smulders is Professor of economics at Tilburg University, Department of Economics and Tilburg Sustainability Center. He is also a CESifo Research Network Fellow research and  International Research Fellow at the Kiel Institute. He acted as advisor to the World Bank and OECD on the issues of Green Growth and Inclusive Growth. He previously held the Svare Chair in Energy System Analysis at the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment, and the Economy at the University of Calgary, Canada. He was a fellow of Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences and a visiting professor at Stanford University.
Smulders’ research examines the impact of environmental and energy policies on economic growth as well as the sources of economic growth in a variety of contexts. He has analyzed under what conditions economic growth can be sustained without deteriorating environmental quality. Recent work has focused on the question whether the stimulation of technological change can reduce the cost of environmental policies in general and the cost of climate change and energy conservation policies in particular. Most of the work is based on small analytical models in the endogenous growth tradition. Other interests include public economics, economic history, and international trade.

Eddy Vaassen is a Professor of Accountancy and Associate Dean Executive Education at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management of Tilburg University. Further he is affiliated to ESAA of Erasmus University Rotterdam, a member of the CEA, and a member of the supervisory board/chairman of the audit committee of OMO. Previously he has held advisory and executive positions at Deloitte and Baker Tilly in the departments of professional practice. He wrote his dissertation in 1994, graduated from the Accountancy program in 1990, and from the Business Economics program in 1988, all at Maastricht University. He has Dutch and international publications - including seven textbooks - within the fields of Internal Control, Auditing, Accounting Information Systems, Information Management, and Management control. His research interests are in the fields of professional judgment in audit decision-making and the use of IT innovations in auditing and control, including continuous monitoring, data analytics, and blockchain. He has supervised doctoral dissertations on process mining, the factors explaining ERP use, decision aid use in auditing, audit expert systems, contract auditing, professional judgment in internal control assessments, and just in time information provision. He is the co-chair of the International Symposium on Accounting Information Systems and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Information Systems, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting, the International Journal of Digital Accounting Research, the International Journal of Accounting and Information Management, and Themes for Accountants in Business of the NBA (editor).

Bas Werker is Professor of Econometrics and Finance at Tilburg University. His research specializes in both mathematical statistics and financial markets. He publishes in leading journals in these areas and serves on various editorial boards. Bas Werker is affiliated to Netspar and has an advisory role in pension reform debates.