Boosting innovation in Europe

About the authors

• André Sapir

  André Sapir, a Belgian citizen, is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also University Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Research fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

  Between 1990 and 2004, he worked for the European Commission, first as Economic Advisor to the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and then as Principal Economic Advisor to President Prodi, also heading his Economic Advisory Group. In 2004, he published 'An Agenda for a Growing Europe', a report to the president of the Commission by a group of independent experts that is known as the Sapir report. After leaving the Commission, he first served as External Member of President Barroso’s Economic Advisory Group and then as Member of the General Board (and Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee) of the European Systemic Risk Board based at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

  André has written extensively on European integration, international trade and globalisation. He holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he worked under the supervision of Béla Balassa. He was elected Member of the Academia Europaea and of the Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.

• Bruno van Pottelsberghe

  Bruno van Pottelsberghe joined Bruegel as a Senior Resident Fellow in November 2007. His research for Bruegel focuses on the effectiveness of several policy tools (R&D subsidies, R&D tax credits, intellectual property, public research and regulatory policies) aimed at stimulating innovation in Europe.

  He was the Chief Economist of the European Patent Office (EPO) from November 2005 to the end of 2007. Since 1999 he has been a professor at the Brussels‘ University (U.L.B.). As holder of the Solvay S.A. Chair of Innovation, he teaches courses related to the economics and management of innovation and intellectual property.

  He is also an adviser of the President and the Rector of the U.L.B. for technology transfer issues.

   

• Reinhilde Veugelers

  Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation.  She has been a Senior fellow at Bruegel since 2009.  She is also a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. From 2004-2008, she was on academic leave, as advisor at the European Commission (BEPA Bureau of European Policy Analysis).  She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018 and on the RISE Expert Group advising the commissioner for Research.  She is a member of VARIO, the expert group advising the Flemish minister for Innovation. She is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science and a co-PI on the Science of Science Funding Initiative at NBER.

  With her research concentrated in the fields of industrial organisation, international economics and strategy, innovation and science, she has authored numerous well cited publications in leading international journals.  Specific recent topics include novelty in technology development,  international technology transfers through MNEs, global innovation value chains, young innovative companies, innovation for climate change,  industry science links and their impact on firm’s innovative productivity, evaluation of research & innovation policy,  explaining scientific productivity,  researchers’ international mobility,  novel scientific research.

  Websites:
  https://feb.kuleuven.be/reinhilde.veugelers
  https://bruegel.org/author/reinhilde-veugelers/

• Mathias Dewatripont

  He holds a BA (1981) and MA (1982) in economics from ULB and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University (1986). His general research area is the theory of incentives and organizations. Since 1990, he has been Professor of Economics at ULB (part-time between 2011 and 2017). Between 1998 and 2011, he was part-time (7 weeks a year) Visiting Professor at MIT and Research Director of CEPR. Fellow of the Econometric Society, laureate of the 1998 Francqui Prize and of the 2003 Yrjo Jahnsson Prize for Economics, he was President of the EEA in 2005. He was member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council between 2005 and 2012. He was Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies (1990-94) and one of the three Programme co-chairs of the 2000 World Congress of the Econometric Society. He is member of the Académie Royale De Belgique and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. He was co-Director of ECARES (1991-2002) and, upon the creation of the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, he was its Vice-President (2008-2009), President (2009-2010) and then Dean (2010-2011). He was outside Director of CGER-Bank (1992-99), and he was Executive Director of the National Bank of Belgium between May 2011 and May 2017 (and its Vice-Governor between June 2014 and March 2015), being its representative on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (2011-2017) and on the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank (2014-2017).