Peter Nijkamp (born 26 February 1946) is a Dutch

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

, Professor of

Regional Economics Regional economics is a sub-discipline of economics and is often regarded as one of the fields of the social sciences. It addresses the economic aspect of the regional problems that are spatially analyzable so that theoretical or policy implicatio ...

and

Economic Geography Economic geography is the subfield of human geography that studies economic activity and factors affecting it. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topi ...

at the

Vrije Universiteit The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the othe ...

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, a fellow of the

Tinbergen Institute The Tinbergen Institute is a leading research and graduate education institute for Economics and Business. Established in 1987, the institute is named afteJan Tinbergen a Nobel laureate in economics (1969), and is a collaboration between the School ...

and President of the Governing Board of the Netherlands Research Council (NWO). He is ranked among the top 100 economists in the world according to

IDEAS/RePEc Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, ...

, and is by far the most prolific economist. Towards the end of his career at the VU university Nijkamp faced accusations of

self-plagiarism Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of anothe ...

and VU-appointed investigators have criticised referencing methods in some of his work.Commissie kraakt Nijkamp - VU vindt dat te hard
''Advalvas'', 17 March 2015.

Biography

Born in

Dalfsen Dalfsen (; Dutch Low Saxon: ) is a municipality and a town in the Salland region of the Dutch province of Overijssel. The municipality of Dalfsen was increased to its current size on 1 January 2001 through the amalgamation of the municipalities of ...

, Overijssel, Nijkamp received his MSc in

Econometrics Econometrics is an application of statistical methods to economic data in order to give empirical content to economic relationships. M. Hashem Pesaran (1987). "Econometrics", '' The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics'', v. 2, p. 8 p. 8 ...

and Regional Economics in 1970, and his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Regional Economics in 1972, both from the

Erasmus University Erasmus University Rotterdam ( ; abbreviated as EUR) is a public university, public research university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century Christia ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

, the

. He has honorary doctorates from the

Vrije Universiteit Brussel The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Dutch language, Dutch, ; lit. Free University of Brussels; abbreviated VUB) is a Dutch- and English-speaking research university in Brussels, Belgium. It has four campuses: Brussels Humanities, Science and Engine ...

and the

National Technical University of Athens The National (Metsovian) Technical University of Athens (NTUA; , ''National Metsovian Polytechnic''), sometimes known as Athens Polytechnic, a university in Athens, Greece. It is named in honor of its benefactors Nikolaos Stournaris, Eleni Tosi ...

. He is a winner of the Spinozapremie (1996), the European Prize in Regional Science, and Founder's Medal of the Regional Science Association International. He has been member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

since 1987.

Controversy

In 2013, the PhD thesis of one of his students was withdrawn one day before the scheduled defence. It consisted almost entirely of papers jointly written with Nijkamp. An internal investigation at the VU determined that some of these papers were recycled versions of yet earlier papers, with other co-authors, who had not been cited properly and this might be considered a form of plagiarism. The VU's rector, Frank van der Duyn Schouten, stated that Nijkamp had acted improperly but had not committed plagiarism. The student involved was allowed to adapt the thesis and the graduation ceremony took place in 2014. Following extensive press reports that claimed to have found cases of self-plagiarism in Nijkamp's work and an analysis by an anonymous whistleblower, the VU announced it would investigate Nijkamp's entire publishing record. It would also inquire with the

on the boundary between self-plagiarism and "self-citation". The investigation committee under

Jaap Zwemmer Jacobus Willibrordus "Jaap" Zwemmer (born 1945) is a Dutch fiscal jurist. He was a professor of tax law at the University of Amsterdam between 1980 and 2006. He also served as interim rector magnificus of the university in 2007. Zwemmer furthermore ...

concluded in March 2015 that Nijkamp had re-used earlier publications in new papers on a certain scale, without proper referencing and the committee qualified this as "questionable research practice". The VU accepted some, but not all, of the committee conclusions. In a separate investigation the Dutch National Board on Research Integrity found Nijkamp "careless" but not in breach of scientific integrity. It also found university regulations on self-citation insufficient at the time. Nijkamp himself stated that the investigation committee's methodology and selection of publications is too thin a base for any conclusions.‘Zelfplagiaat’-rapport van de Commissie-Zwemmer: Broddelwerk over fictieve peanuts
Nijkamp's response, via retractionwatch.com, retrieved 8 November 2015.

Publications

His books include * ''Social Change and Sustainable Transport'' (with William Black, 2002, Indiana University Press) * ''Public Facilities Planning'' (with Lili Kiminami and Kenneth Button, 2007, Edward Elgar) * ''Spatial Dynamics, Networks and Modelling'' (with Aura Reggiani, 2006, Edward Elgar). His journal papers include * ''Second-best congestion pricing: The case of an untolled alternative'' (with Eric Verhoef and

Piet Rietveld Pieter (Piet) Rietveld (15 December 1952 – 1 November 2013) was a Dutch economist and Professor in Transport Economics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and a fellow at the Tinbergen Institute. He was among the top researchers in economic geo ...

, 1996, Journal of Urban Economics), * ''Qualitative multicriteria analysis for environmental management'' (with Giuseppe Munda and

, 1994, Ecological Economics), * ''Price and income elasticities in residential water demand'' (with Jasper Dalhuisen, Raymond Florax and Henri de Groot, 2003, Land Economics).

References

External links

*
Home page

Google Scholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nijkamp, Peter 1946 births Living people People from Dalfsen Dutch economists Dutch econometricians Energy economists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Spinoza Prize winners Academic staff of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Erasmus University Rotterdam alumni Members of Academia Europaea Regional economists