| CENTERLEO APOSTEL Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
| |
Date : May 17, 1996
Free University of Brussels (VUB)
Bertin MARTENS :
born as a Belgian (and remained one ever since) on June 5, 1957 (thanks for
any birthday messages).
Masters Degree in Economics at the Catholic University of Leuven, (Belgium)
with specialisation in
econometrics and international economics. Hobby's: reading, do-it-yourself
(almost unlimited possibilities to
re-shape my physical environment) and travelling (unlimited source of
personal and professional inspiration),
often in the arm-chair format of travel-literature.
At a respectable average reading speed of one book per week, taking into account average life expectancy for Belgian males (72 years), and deducting the first 12 years of my life when I had not yet developed this addiction, I expect to read about 3,000 books during my lifetime, a mere fraction of the number I would actually like to read. This is the ultimate personal proof that we live in a world of limited comprehension and bounded rationality. Often a cause for despair but also an excuse to take things less serious...
My professional trajectory is focused mainly on development economics (project design and evaluation, macro-economic modelling and implementation of structural reform programmes) in Africa and Asia, with occasional diversions into economic modelling of European economies (the European Single Market). I joined the European Commission in 1989 but took sabbatical leave again in December 1995 to work as a research fellow at the VUB/CLEA multidisciplinary research centre.
As an economist, my attention has been drawn increasingly to the incapacity of neo-classical economic theories to explain structural problems in economies: under-performance of many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and transition problems in former communist countries, long-term structural problems in Western Europe. In recent years, a number of new approaches have been developed in economics, looking at structural problems in terms of social order and institutions and the capacity to innovate. Economic science is gradually joining the world of complex adaptive systems.
My own research concentrates on the interfaces between cognitive space, social interactions space and the emergence of institutions and economic transactions, including production and consumption. I am now working on a generalised version of the Coase Theorem which could (a) explain the transition mechanism from individual cognitive space into social interactions space and (b) self-emergence of order and social structures in a group of competitive individuals. Such a theory would cover the entire social interactions space and not only the special case of economic transactions. Present-day mainstream economics, based on the neo-classical paradigm, deals with competitive transactions in a market-setting only; it has not explanation for the emergences of behavioural rules and social structures, and their impact on economics.