Erwin Bulte

Bulte (1968) studied tropical forestry and development economics and obtained his PhD from Wageningen University and the Netherlands Network of Economics (NAKE) in 1997. Much of Bulte’s research concentrates on African countries that have recently been areas of conflict. Among the issues he looks at is the influence of local governments and development projects on developments of these areas, both economic and otherwise. For instance, he conducts economic experiments in various villages to investigate how trust and corruption impact economic development and he experiments with different methods of development funding. Bulte has received various grants for his research, including a Vidi and a Vici grant. In addition to his appointment at UU, Bulte also holds a professorship at Wageningen University, is a Fellow at both Cambridge and Oxford and a member of the CGIAR’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA). In April 2014, the Dutch journal De Economist named him the Netherlands’ top economist.