Eric Bartelsman is professor and head of the Department of Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He studied economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his PhD from Columbia University. He previously has served as economist at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC, as advisor to CPB, as head of economic research at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, as director of the Economic and Social Institute, and as member of the Netherlands Council of Economic Advisors (REA). Prof. Bartelsman has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and San Francisco and an academic advisor to projects of the World Bank, the OECD, and the European Commission. His current teaching responsibilities are in the fields of macro and international economics. His research interests focus on the sources of productivity growth, both from a micro and macro perspective, and have led to publications in top-level journals. Prof. Bartelsman has been the recipient of research funding from the Netherlands Science Foundation (NWO) and from the ESF.