Frank A.G. den Butter (1948) is a policy oriented  political economist. He studied econometrics at the University of Amsterdam and obtained his PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam. From 1973-1988 he worked at the Netherlands Central Bank and was involved in economic modelling, policy analysis and research management. Since 1988 he is professor of economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and founded the research team ALERT (Applied Labour Economics Research Team) which has meanwhile obtained an excellent international reputation in its field. From 1989-1996 he was a director of the Tinbergen Institute, the Netherlands Research Institute and Graduate School for Economics and Business of the Amsterdam and Rotterdam Universities. From 1998-2002 he was member of the multidisciplinary Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) at the Prime Minister’s office in The Hague. It the major advisory council on long term prospects for strategic government policy. As member of the council he was, amongst others, responsible for the report on “The Netherlands as a trading nation” which was published in 2003 and initiated the founding of the Research Institute for Transaction Management (RITM).

Moreover, Frank den Butter has been chairman of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association (the oldest economists’ association in the world) from 1997-2003 (KVS) and was member of the Central Statistical Committee (the supervisory committee of the Central Bureau of Statistics, CBS) from 1998-2004. He was member of the economic policy committee of the Social Economic Council (SER), and chaired various academic and governmental committees and bodies. He is chairman of the supervisory committee of the Economic Institute for the Building Industry (EIB) and was involved in research and advisory projects with former prime minister Lubbers, with the present prime minister Balkenende, and with the former ministers Peijs and Zalm. Outside the Netherlands he has been member of the board of European Association of Labour Economists (EALE) and acted as consultant for OECD, ILO, the World Bank, the government of Ethiopia and the IAB.   

Frank den Butter published about 15 books and 300 articles, both in the main international journals (e.g. Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Applied Statistics, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Institutional Economics and Organization, Economic Modelling, Empirical Economics, Applied Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Productivity Analysis) and in policy oriented academic journals in the Netherlands (see list of publications). He lectured both in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses in applied economic methods, economic modelling, macro economics, political economy, micro economics, public economics, labour economics, monetary economics and international economics. He is also frequently invited for lectures outside academia, for instance for captains of industry and in public administration.