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March 2014, YEAR 23, ISSUE 3

TheECU’nomist

Professor Hein Roelfsema onEntrepreneurial Ecosystems

Interview: USE alumni at Shell

CPB Analyst Sultan Mehmood on Poverty and Terrorism

Interview: The Protectors of USE

The Protectors of USE

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Café de Stichtse Taveerne

Twijnstraat 433511 ZH Utrecht-Tel.: 030 - 2315555-E-mail: Info@stichtsetaveerne.nl -http://www.stichtsetaveerne.nl/

Contents

The ECU’nomist is published every quarter online, as well as printed in a circulation of 500 for members, patrons and external contacts of ECU’92.

Thomas Huigen | Dea Tusha | Mithra Madhavan | Lukas Molkentin | Annette Aprilana

Study Association ECU’92Kriekenpitplein 18, Room 1.21

3584EC UtrechtT 030-2539680

www.ecu92.nleditorial@ecu92.nlPrinted by flyeralarm BV

Page 4 ________________________________________ Letter from the EditorPage 5 ________________________________________ Letter from the BoardPage 6 ________________________________________ The Protectors of USEPage 8 ____________________________________ Entrepreneurial EcosystemsPage 10 __________________________ Dispelling the Poverty-Terrorism MythPage 12 _____________________________________ Interview: It’s Shell TimePage 14 __________________________________________I’ll take a MandarinPage 15 ___________________________ The Global Brigades March to GhanaPage 16 __________________________ Book review: The Economic NaturalistPage 18 ______ The Olympics: Bliss from the Gods, or a Curse from the Games?Page 20 ______________________________________________BerkeleyiciousPage 22 ___________________________________ The Culture of CompetitionPage 23 ________________________________________________ Life Hacks

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Letter from the Editor

Dear Homo reciprocans,I nearly greeted you as belonging to that selfish species we know so well. In previ-ous issues “dear rational being” and “dear utility-maximising individual” were used to address you. The species economicus, genus Homo seemed the logical next form of salutation. We’ve often heard that we belong to this species. Giving birth to live young makes us part of the class Mammalia, grasping hands the Primate order, lacking tails the family Hominidae, and larger brains the genus Homo. But what makes our species distinct from other species of Homo? In our previous is-sue Elena Micajkova wrote about the fusion between economics and psychology, where she argued that the assumptions that govern the basic classification of an Homo economicus have been investigated and found wanting. People do not al-ways make decisions according to selfishness and rationality; they can be altruis-tic and utility non-maximising. One need only look at a random ultimatum game of non-economist participants to witness the ‘irrational’ behaviour of the respondent who refuses the 1 euro he receives from the first player, who thought he would be clever by allocating 99 euro to himself. In the end both receive nothing. Homo economicus would be puzzled by the action of the respondent: 1 euro is better than nothing!

Homo reciprocans has been proposed as an alternative. This new species assumes that people interact with each other with a propensity to cooperate. They are willing to reward behaviour that is just or fair, while they punish unjust or un-fair behaviour. Homo reciprocans’ main aim is to improve its environment. Nonetheless, according to most economists Homo economicus can still be a useful model for individualistic behaviour in a market economy. Furthermore, most criticism against Homo economicus has been leveled at the undergraduate version, whose simple form makes it a poor model. Homo economicus described in detail better predicts human behaviour. So perhaps some hybrid should evolve from both species to better incorporate an accurate model for human behaviour. For the time being, I’ll rather greet you as an altruistic person who has taken the effort to read this magazine.

So much for the philosophical rant, time to rant about ECU’nomist issues. While studying in Adam Smith, I was con-fronted with an awkward situation: two USE students were trashing the ECU’nomist in my presence. The verdict: “look at those pixellated front cover pictures, what a disgrace”, etc. These two distant cousins from another genus had a point: the pictures did look quite blurred. In this issue we’ve done our best to rectify this. So what can you expect in this issue? Assistant Professor Hein Roelfsema writes for us about the role of universities in teaching entrepreneurship, while USE alumnus (and CPB analyst) Sultan Mehmood describes the relationship between terrorism and poverty. Have you ever wondered who keeps you safe at USE? In an interview with Security Guard Dirk de Graaf, and Building Care Officer Shijaam Soekhram, we find out about the behind-the-scenes of USE campus affairs. We also have an interview with two USE alumni who currently work at Shell, so if you’ve envisioned a life of oil-drilling for yourself, turn to this interview. The external contributions of Fabio van Keulen and Frauke Diedrichs should also not be missed, as the one describes his experiences learning Mandarin in Shanghai, and the other tells us about the work of the Global Brigades. If you’ve been eyeing Berkeley as an exchange destination, turn to Muhammed Awaid Irshad’s article about his experiences there. We also have our own writers contributing, with Dea zooming in on the economics of the olympics, and Annette reviewing The Economic Naturalist by Robert Frank, who explains everyday enigmas from an economics perspective. Also, please don’t hesitate to write your own article if you feel inspired!

Importantly, if you would like to become a member of the Editorial Committee, don’t wait until next year, join now!

Sincerely,

Thomas Huigen

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Letter from the Board

Dear student, We are already in the third period of the academic year, which means summer is coming. When I look outside the window, I feel the first sunrays bath my skin in much needed vitamin D.

However, before the sun definitely will break through and holidays will start, the board will organize a lot of activities for you. To start with, we will have our Dies (birthday) week in the last week of March. During this week, ECU’92 organizes plenty of activities, like a beer cantus, a Dies reception and a Relaxcie party. So what’s the Dies all about? Different boards from around Utrecht and other university cities come over to officially congratulate us. They do this by giving us a present, as well as a very long speech. I will then give a thank-you-speech in return which has to be even longer. We finish off by having a drink and then we start all over with a new board. You can imagine that it will be a tough night for us!

As soon as we have recovered from this it is time for you to let your voice be heard, because on the 1st of April, (this is no joke) there will be a general meeting. This is the opportunity for you to provide us with some feedback. Three new committees (Introduction, Conference and Carrier Day) will be installed and the board will present its semi annual report.

Besides these activities, on the 13th of April the ECU’92 Board will go on study trip together with the study trip com-mittee and 22 other ECU’92 members. The study trip will be a business tour to London, where we will visit several companies such as J.P. Morgan, Bloomberg and Lloyd’s. In May, the activities committee will organize an activity which is the first in the history of ECU’92: Hitch Hiking! On the second of May students will hitch hike to Gent. The team who will arrive first in Gent will get an awesome prize!

With all these activities to come, I almost forgot to mention that the ECU’92 Board of 2013-2014 also has to think about a new board for next year. Applying for a board year is possible by sending in your motivation letter and CV before the 1st of April. For now, enjoy the sun and do not forget to stop by the ECU room for a cup of tea or coffee!

On behalf of the ECU’92 Board, Lisanne Hoekstra

Chairman of the ECU’92 Board of 2013-2014

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The Protectors of USEBy Thomas Huigen

On the 6th of March I interviewed USE Building Care Officer Shijaam Soekhram (right in the picture) and security guard Dirk de Graaf (left in the picture) to see what their jobs are all about, and to better understand the minds of the men who defend us from the external dark forces trying to enter USE every day. They share an office at the entrance of Spinoza. The one sits behind his monitor keeping an eye on the security cameras around campus, the other is busy with phone calls and administrative issues.

Q: What is your professional back-ground?

S: When I was fourteen, I moved from Suriname with my family to The Nether-lands. I went to a technical school to be-come an electrician. After this, I did some odd jobs before becoming a bookbinder, which I did for 25 years until the com-pany went bankrupt and I needed to find another job. I applied to different jobs, and then I got this one as the Building Care Officer at USE. I’ve been the Build-ing Care Officer since the beginning of USE, while the security has only been on campus for the last two years. The book-binder job was very tough, so my current job is much quieter and relaxed. I like this job because there’s a lot of contact with students and lecturers, so helping them with their problems is satisfying. Sometimes a student needs some help with their broken bike, so then I’ll give them some tools. I’ve actually never had problems with students.

D: I worked as a gardener for 8 years. I was always working outside, building and maintaining gardens. After this I decided to enroll in security training and subsequently got a security guard job at a refugee centre for 5 years. It was a stress-ful job. There were attempted suicides, hunger strikes and fights. For a couple of weeks it was nice to tell everyone the tough stories, but after that it really wasn’t fun. I would often cycle home looking back over my shoulder in case someone was following me. When I did night shifts I would have to deal with people playing their music too loudly. Then I

would have to tell the person to turn their music down. The perpetrator often ended up being a giant guy who couldn’t care less. Then one had to bring it across tactically; otherwise one became minced meat. In these cases we would just shut off the electricity to his room to put off the music. But if he found out, I would’ve obviously had a problem, so it was a stressful time. Here at Utrecht University it’s much more peaceful. Even when it comes to loud music, there are few complaints on campus.

Q: What does a typical day look like?

S: I have a list of daily tasks that I have to complete on campus, from checking that the printers are in order, to fixing lights or any other gen-eral maintenance issues. Often students lose something, so I’ll help them search for it. I also often work with the security guards. We take security walks together and they help me carry heavy things like tables when I can’t do it alone. I see to Adam Smith, Spinoza and James Boswell, but soon I’ll also be taking over some jobs at the UCU campus buildings. I’ll have to be everywhere on campus, but that’s the point of my job: I have to be visible to people if they need my help. I’m here every day, even if I’m sick I come to work because I enjoy it here.

D: As a security officer we’re expected to walk around campus to make sure every-thing is in order with regards to door-locks and campus security. I enjoy being outside from my gardening days. During night shifts the guards drive around a few times per night and lock the buildings and the front gate. We also sometimes have to take garbage inspections at the UCU residences because some people de-cide to put their garbage in front of their houses instead of in the garbage contain-ers, which could lead to rat plagues and other nasty creatures appearing. So we speak to these students so that they clean up their garbage. We also check that the first aid kits are properly stocked and oth-er emergency equipment too. We work on alternating shifts per week, either from

8am-4pm for one week, or 3pm-11pm the next. But other colleagues have to do night shifts from 11pm-7am, which I’ve also done in the past while at the refugee centre. I’ve got a family, so it’s not pleasant to work night shifts, especially because I had to drive home early in the morning for some 45 minutes, sometimes getting stuck in morning traffic jams. The

road I take home has many trees next to it, so I would have to keep the window open and stick my head out to keep my-self awake and not drive into one of the trees. Then I realised that I didn’t want to do night shifts anymore. At Utrecht University I started out at the Uithof library where I worked for seven years, in the “black box” as we call it.

Q: Have there ever been fights or crimi-nal acts on campus?

S: Since I’ve been here I’ve never wit-nessed a fight. Sometimes there are burglaries in the UCU residences because they leave their windows open. A laptop has also been stolen in one of the rooms in Spinoza because the window was open. It’s sometimes difficult to differentiate between a student and a homeless person looking to steal something, so I’m happy with the security guards because they often walk around campus and deter any criminals from coming here.

D: In the 18 years I’ve worked at Utrecht University I’ve only seen two incidents of violence. Students are nowadays under pressure to finish their studies quickly, while in the past there was more time for finishing one’s study and time for tomfoolery. So today students have little opportunity to cause disturbances on campus. Also, UCU is close to the city centre, so probably the students drink and cause trouble there, which means we’re spared of their mischief.

“It’s some-times difficult to differenti-ate between a student and a homeless person looking to steal some-thing”

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Q: Shijaam mentioned that it is difficult to tell the difference between a suspi-cious homeless person and a student. How do you deal with a suspicious look-ing person?

D: I’ll walk up to the guy and ask him what he’s doing on campus. If he gives me a questionable story I’ll ask him to leave the premises. If he doesn’t listen to me, I’ll ask him again, which makes it an act of trespassing and I can call the police who can arrest him. But this hardly ever happens.

Q: Do you have to be able to fight as a security guard?

D: No, not really. Even a bouncer isn’t allowed to smack anyone, only transport any rabble-rouser as gently as possible from the club to the street. They’re not allowed to do more than that. We’re here for peace and order.

Q: Does a security guard have to have a strong physical presence?

D: A security guard in The Netherlands is nothing more than a civilian in a suit. We’re actually not allowed to do anything, just like you. If you see someone steal-ing something, you’re allowed to hold them until the police comes, but you can’t physically harm them because then the police will be coming after you! However, if the person wants to start punching me or takes out a knife, I’ll just let them go because I don’t want to risk getting into a fight. Self-defense is always the last option, one has to avoid it as much as possible. At the refugee centre there was a fight between a Nigerian woman and an Angolan woman, the one had a heavy frying pan in her hand that she used as a weapon. I could have gone in there and got myself pummelled by the frying pan because her adrenaline was pumping. If I had been hit, they would’ve just contin-ued fighting, which is to no one’s benefit, and I would’ve been out cold. What we learnt during our training was to observe whether it was possible to do anything to de-escalate the situation. Only then does one step in if one’s safety isn’t at risk.

Q: Finally, how is the cooperation be-tween Shijaam and yourself?

D: It works fine, I see him more than my wife! S: You shouldn’t say that, now the director is going to get you a new office!

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Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Most students are aware that the job market for university graduates is, well, not what it used to be. Although most can still find work, jobs have differ-ent characteristics than 10 years ago. For a start, jobs are mostly on a temporary basis, with little prospect of a full time fixed contract after say the first year. This means that few graduates have the op-portunity to obtain things like a mortgage for a house and have to spend substantial time and energy in ‘hedging their bets’ in the labour market in case their tempo-rary job is not sustained. Second, the big company has virtually disappeared from the corporate spectrum. Students are far more likely to be employed in small innovative firms when compared to the standard trajectory of the salary man thirty years ago. Lastly technological progress has created flatter organizations. In relation with the first two points, this means that graduates are given less time to develop their competencies in the workplace and instead are expected to contribute instantly to company profits.

One implication of the change in the labour market is that the opportunity costs of ‘proper’ entrepreneurship have fallen. More and more, college graduates contemplate starting a company to offer innovative services and products when the job market is insecure. The numbers for the US are already impressive. Five years ago, only 30 percent of graduate students had a keen interest in starting as entrepreneurs. In the last poll, this has risen to 80 percent. Also, many more graduates actually start as entrepreneurs. For many top-notch business schools this is already over 40 percent.

Modern EntrepreneurshipEducation

These developments pose several chal-lenges to universities. High on the agenda is to improve entrepreneurship education. Business schools often are geared towards delivering managers for large firms by offering an abundance of courses in

By Professor Hein Roelfsema

Hein Roelfsema is the Director of the Utrecht Center for Entrepreneurship and teaches international business at the Utrecht University School of Economics.

financial management, international busi-ness, and organisational behaviour. These courses can be tweaked towards entre-preneurship. However, this does not hold for the people teaching them. In addition, the demand for entrepreneurship often comes from students with a science and technology background. Given the ‘rich-ness’ of their curriculum, these students do not have access to business education, let alone entrepreneurship. The risk is that entrepreneurship education for this group introduces them only to the basics of finance and accounting and thus fails to build entrepreneurial competencies.

Traditionally, entrepreneur-ship courses are modeled as some kind of business plan writing, often in com-bination with a pitching competition at the end. The tools that students use are reading a book and some format of writing the business plan. Currently, the CANVAS method is highly popular, but there are many other approaches. The key problem with this approach is the type of learning that it generates. Thinking about business models is useful; however, it generates passive cognitive knowledge that is difficult to embed at the level of skills. Entrepreneurship by contrast has more to do with building experimental and experiential knowledge. So the key challenge to entrepreneurship education is how to let students ‘feel’ and experience entrepreneurship. Especially for science and technology students this creates a substantial chicken and egg problem.

Starting as an entrepreneur with no cognitive frame is prone to failure. But staring with the cognitive frame runs the risk that it does not ‘land’ and the student does not take off. These risks are less severe for business students, because they have basic cognitive skills and can thus concentrate on the behavioural ones. But these students then may lack science competencies to create innovative value propositions.

For this reason, in the US there is more emphasis on the process and se-quencing of experiences in entrepreneur-

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ship education. Most popular is the Lean Launchpad meth-od, associated with the work of Steve Blank and Eric Ries. These serial entrepreneurs have designed a path to startup en-trepreneurship that follows a sequence of logical steps in learning. What is nice for academia is that the process is rather like a scientific research project. The aspiring entre-preneur postulates specific as-sumptions about her business idea and designs a method to test these. When the hypothesis is rejected, the entrepreneur pivots to a new assumption and changes course. The key to the method is that the student really starts a business. In business science terminol-ogy: you only learn through commitment, and deeper commitment makes you learn more.

But then there is a challenge. When entrepreneurship education is actual entrepreneurship, then universities should support these entrepreneurs in their work, not only in their education. This calls for a rethinking of how students work and learn within university. To start, the process to create entrepreneurship takes time, and students should be given the time. This means that the introduc-tion to entrepreneurship should be much earlier in the curriculum so that students can self-select into courses that require substantial commitment in time later. Self-selection is important also because entrepreneurship education requires higher-at-the-margin commitment from staff. This means that the marginal ben-efits in terms of entrepreneurial attain-ment should also be high, so as to make

a ‘profit’ on the investments. In addition, the facilities within universities should be geared towards the process of entrepreneurship. For this reason, at Utrecht University we have created a student in-cubator and we try to support entrepreneurial students by providing space and network contacts. For our econom-ics campus, it would be great to use the campus entrance building for that in the near future. All in all, universi-ties should create a physical and mental ‘white space’ for students in terms of free time and facilities in which they

can explore entrepreneurship.

University as Feeder

Designing entrepreneurship within the university walls requires that there is a good connection between what happens within these walls and the dynamics of the world outside it. Clearly, most universities have international-ized strongly. However, the first steps of entrepreneurship students often require that there is a feed-back loop for ideas in the regional business community. So, uni-versities have to cultivate their entrepre-neurial ecosystem to support entrepre-neurial students. Certainly this task goes together with that of academic knowledge valorization. This knowledge is ‘embed-ded’ in students and when these put it to work as entrepreneurs, this is a strong social impact mechanism of knowledge. But the business community can often benefit more from being close to universi-ty in terms of innovative capabilities and

human capital pools. Hence, both parties have something to gain from the interac-tion, and in theory the connection should be easy to establish and sustain. However, in practice there are substantial coordination problems. All interaction is costly, so both parties should invest time and money up-front to reap the long run rewards of cooperation. So if discount rates are high because of opportunity costs in the business com-munity and short-lived funding programs in academia, there will be substantial un-der investment. The barriers can also be cultural, in the sense that there is a large ‘psychic distance’ between university and the business community. In that case, the process to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem is likely to be incremental and to follow a pattern of learning and deeper commitment from both sides over time.

A key element of the strategy is the role of universities as a ‘feeder’ of entrepreneurial activities in the region. This role requires much self-restraint from knowledge institutions. As a guid-ing principle, the subjects that benefit most from them should ideally initiate activities. It is too easy for universities to use some public budget for the ad hoc or-ganization of all kinds of activities in the business community. But this makes uni-versities a ‘leader’ in business. Far better is to be an active ‘feeder’ of activities that arise in the business community. This role can be played with money and facilities. But as a strategy, the business community is often unorganised and providing a plat-form and supporting the right business leaders interested in the common good is more important in building up the entre-preneurial ecosystem.

“All in all, Universities should create a physical and mental ‘white space’ for stu-dents in terms of free time and facilities in which they can explore entre-preneurship”

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Dispelling the Poverty-Terrorism Myth

By Sultan Mehmood

A superficial analysis of the most comprehensive database on global terror-ism, START’s Global Terrorism Database, reveals that over the past decade Pakistan has had the highest number of terrorism related deaths in the world. In fact, the death-toll exceeds the combined terror-ism related deaths for both the European and North-American continents. Hence, an understanding of terrorism, its dy-namics, its causes, the reasons for its esca-lations and de-escalations is of utmost importance to Pakistan.

Unfortunately, policy makers, academics and politicians in Pakistan rely increasingly on speculations and their intuitions alone to deal with this menace. The purpose of this article is to dispel the myth that reforms in education and economic growth alone will bring down terrorism levels. I will present evidence based on studies of terrorism and my own work on terrorism in Pakistan to reason that poverty and illiteracy are not determinants of terrorism. Most certainly, education and growth policies should be pursued in their own right but to expect that these policies will reduce terrorism is based on pure conjecture. A myriad of studies go against the ‘conventional wis-

dom’ view of terrorism. This view states that it is those poor, young, illiterate and brainwashed teens who have nothing to live for that turn to terrorism. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Linking unemployment with crime and explaining optimal punish-ment designs had won Gary Becker the Nobel Prize in economics. He showed that criminals ‘rationally’ decide to perpetrate crimes given the probability of getting caught and the severity of possible punishment. He further found that high unemployment and poverty rates are re-lated closely to higher crime rates. Hence, in a study of terrorism it was natural to study whether a high degree of impover-ishment increased terrorism levels. This belief was shared by world leaders and top academics. For example, George Bush argued: “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror.” Similarly, Jessica Stern of Harvard Kennedy School notes that the United States “can no longer afford to allow states to fail …

Sultan Mehmood is a USE alumnus who currently works at the Central Planning Bureau (CPB) researching topics on short-run macroeconomic stabilisation policies and long-run economic growth. He also writes for numerous Pakistani newspapers on topics relating to economics and politics. During his bachelor thesis he researched the macroeconomic implications of terrorism in Pakistan (published in the Defence and Peace Economics Journal). This article explains part of his research and was first published in the Pakistani “Dawn” newspaper on 18 March 2013. He can be followed on Twitter at @mrsultan713.

new Osamas will continue to rise”. These views were shared by others such as Bill Clinton, King Abdullah of Jordan, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Nevertheless, to the frustration of many academics, the simple positive relationship between poverty and (mate-rial) crime could not be extrapolated to a positive structural relationship between poverty and terrorism. Not a single study could make a cogent case that terrorism had economic roots. This lack of evi-dence culminated into a recent review of the literature by Martin Gassebner and Simon Luechinger of KOF Swiss Eco-nomic Institute. The authors estimated 13.4 million different equations, drew on 43 different studies and 65 correlates of terrorism to conclude that higher levels of poverty and illiteracy are NOT associated with greater terrorism. In fact, only the lack of civil liberties and high popula-tion growth could predict high terrorism levels accurately.

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So does this relation also hold for Pakistan? Yes! Christine Fair from Georgetown University documents a similar phenomenon for Pakistan. By utilizing data on 141 killed militants, she finds that militants in Pakistan are recruited from middle-class and well educated families. This is further corroborated by Graeme Blair and others at Princeton University. They too find evidence of a higher sup-port base of terrorism from the relatively wealthy in Pakistan. In a robust survey of 6000 indi-viduals across Pakistan, which explicitly corrects for item non-response and social desir-ability biases, it is found that the poor are actually 23 times more averse to extremist violence relative to middle class citizens.

My own work comes to a similar conclusion. Deviating from the survey data approach, I rely on actually observed levels of terrorism, income and other measures of macroeconomic wellbe-ing. Exploiting an econometric concept of “Granger-Causality”1 and drawing on data from 1973-2010 in Pakistan, I

1 In the present context Granger causality test ascertains what consistently happens first i.e. does high incomes reduce terrorism in the future rather than higher ter-rorism reducing incomes in the future and vice versa.

document a one-way causality running from terrorism to GDP, investments and exports. The results indicated that a higher incidence of terrorism reduced GDP, investments and exports. However, higher GDP, exports and investment did

not reduce terrorism. The bot-tom line: when the economy was not doing well, terrorism did not increase and vice versa. This result is extremely robust to a host of alternate specifica-tions and control variables.

Alan Krueger from Princeton University seems to have an explanation for this “counter-intuitive” phenom-

enon. After analysing extensive micro and macro level data, he too concludes that in fact terrorists are relatively more educated and are recruited from wealthier families. But, he observes another pattern in the data: a systematic relationship between political oppression and a higher inci-dence of terrorism. He relates terrorism to voting behaviour and concludes that terrorism is a “political, not an economic phenomenon”. He defends his results by arguing at length that political involve-ment requires some understanding of the issues, and learning about those issues is a less costly endeavour for those who are better educated. Just like the more educated are more likely to vote, similarly

“Terrorists are relatively more educated and are recruited from wealthier families.”

those who are more educated are more likely to politically express themselves through terrorism. Hence, political op-pression drives people towards terrorism.

To understand what causes terrorism, one need not ask how much of a population is illiterate or in abject poverty. Rather one should ask who holds strong enough political views to impose them through terrorism. It is not that most terrorists have nothing to live for. Far from it, they are the highly educated political class who so vehemently believe in a cause that they are willing to die for it. The solution to terrorism is not more growth but more freedom!

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On the 28th of February Mithra Madhavan and Thomas Huigen interviewed USE alumni and Shell employees Rutger van der Feltz (left) and Laurens van der Goot (right) at the Free University of Amsterdam (VU). Instead of the anticipated corporate look, both gentlemen were dressed as casual students. These employees of Shell were back to school: following a Register Controlling programme once a week, and working the rest of the week at Shell.

Q: How did your educational and personal background influence your career path?

R: I followed the Economics and Business Economics bachelor program with a minor in law at USE, which was my main reason for studying there. However, dur-ing my bachelor I did not have a clear idea for my future career. I passed all my courses during my bachelor, but the real focus only came during my masters, which I did in financial economics at the Erasmus University. Grades are obviously important during one’s bachelor studies, but only looking at grades could be very one-di-mensional. Social development is also important during university. Having average grades need not be a bad thing, as long as the story makes sense. If there are other ac-tivities a student is doing alongside

their study then that still ensures that the student has a strong case. Having chaired a fraternity (Utrechtsch Studenten Corps) during my bachelors helped me to strengthen my social skills and develop some basic management skills.

L: My educational background overlaps quite a lot with Rutger: we did the same master and we were both in the USC. However, before starting my bachelor at USE I had completed one year of me-chanical engineering at Delft. The city did not appeal to me as much as Utrecht eventually did. At USE I was also attracted to combining economics with a law minor, a nice combination. While at USE I was part of the Relaxcie Commit-tee and the REBO faculty council. When I graduated I had a one-year delay during my bachelors, but I don’t regret this. Being a student also means developing other as-pects besides academic skills. Still, completing it in an acceptable time frame was also important.

The story of one’s development is strengthened by extracurricular activities, such as being part of a fraternity, playing sports and being part of committees. One has to invest time in one’s personal de-velopment. Because of the delay in graduating, I had time to do an in-ternship at ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas before going on to study finance at the Erasmus University. There I had high grades because of greater academic focus.

Q: Why did you choose to work for Shell?

R: Towards the end of my mas-ters I went to a Shell In-house day to orientate myself in a possible career there. The atmosphere was informal, the employees helpful and ambitious. The graduate pro-gramme would allow me to devel-op skills while being employed at Shell. One and a half months after having been at the In-house day I received a call from Shell offering me a job as a Finance Advisor at the Pernis refinery. I hadn’t even started my master’s thesis! What really appealed to me at Shell was the international orientation of the company. I’ve lived in many dif-ferent countries during my youth, from England to the Ivory Coast, so being an employee of a multina-tional company has always been a goal of mine.

L: The Shell In-house day was also the main reason for me applying there. It was much easier to get a better idea about the working en-vironment at Shell. It was apparent that I would interact with my col-leagues informally, without feeling a sense of hierarchy too much.

Interview: It’s Shell TimeBy Mithra Madhavan and Thomas

Huigen

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Q: What does a typical day look like at Shell?

R: I have a corporate function, being part of a central team sup-porting the project and technol-ogy business within Shell. It’s a planning and performance team, managing the business we’re trying to run, setting the plans and coor-dinating the appraisals. There isn’t really a typical day, but there are some routine tasks. For example, every week there is a team meet-ing to discuss everyone’s roles and progress. I also have one-on-one meetings with my boss regularly and that helps ensure that we keep each other informed about our work and how we feel about the work we do.

L: I’m a financial advisor at Shell’s Pernis refinery close to Rotterdam, which processes crude oil. It’s the largest refinery in Europe, and the fifth largest in the world, process-ing some 400 thousand barrels of oil per day. At the refinery I’m part of a finance team where we analyse costs, investments and profits. Half of the time I’m busy with this, while the rest is spent on ad-hoc projects, making it quite a dynamic environment to work in. So I also don’t have a typical day per se.

Q: What do you make of the neg-ative image Shell often receives in the media and from environmen-tal groups?

L: Shell has a “goal zero” pro-gramme: strengthening our safety culture in operating without fatali-ties or significant incidents (i.e. no harm, no leaks). Shell strongly believes in its social responsibility, and as an employer of around 10 000 people in the Netherlands it is an important contributor to Dutch society.

Q: Shell has started to use more wind farms in North America and Europe- a step towards cleaner energy. In a day and age where being environmentally-friendly is stressed on many occasions, how fast do you think this practice will spread?

L: Shell invests some $1 billion on R&D per year, some of which goes to sustainable technologies. How-ever, this does not form a part of Shell’s core operations. Most of the headway with regards to the effect on the environment has come from the expansion of gas produc-tion, which is much less harmful than coal generated electricity.

Q: What is the work atmosphere like at Shell?

L: There is no strict protocol with regards to work schedule. Mostly I work online, which means that there is little face time needed. However, even though we can work at home part of the time, coming to the office is still the most fun. I do it as often as I can, which might sound strange to students. The reason is that the social aspect of working at Shell is very stimulating. Cut-throat-com-petition between colleagues does not exist, which means that the atmosphere amongst colleagues is informal and relaxed.

R: Mostly what is needed is a laptop and a phone to be able to work. So working at home in case I need to be somewhere else on a particular day isn’t really a problem. Of course, being away for most of the time is also not the idea. I enjoy being around my colleagues and building relation-ships. As Laurens said, there is also a very stimulating atmosphere at Shell. They really invest in their human capital in that they allow

us to take part in training pro-grams so that we can also get some personal growth, both in terms of knowledge and experience.

Q: Any advice to USE students?

L: During my masters I defined areas which I found important in a possible job: a strong analytical side, the social environment and a good work-life balance. Intern-ships are obviously very helpful in orientating oneself in the different career paths available. However, it is important to be aware that there will always be some element of uncertainty, which means that one should be flexible to changing circumstances within one’s work and life.

R: I agree with Laurens that expe-riencing different things is impor-tant in broadening one’s horizons, unless you already have a clear goal. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and I am still not completely sure of my long term goal. I would say be open-minded and make sure that you enjoy what you do!

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I’ll take a MandarinBy Fabio van Keulen

With roughly one fifth of the world currently speaking Mandarin, the reasons to start studying this language are evident. It counts the highest number of native speakers in the world, yet the lowest of non-natives learning it relative to other major languages. The result is straightforward: demand to learn Man-darin is very high. There are of course countless reasons why so few people engage in learning it, the main one being its user-unfriendliness. In a first learn-ing stage the tones (different intonation in pronouncing syllables that result in different words) may probably drive you crazy, while in later stages, it is the tan-gled syntax and meaningless particles. In addition, each word has to be learned by heart. There simply is nothing a Western learner can refer to, to guess the meaning of the word fangzi (house). Not to men-tion the real challenge set by the Chinese writing system: there is no alphabet. It is believed that to read the newspaper you should be able to recognize as many as 3 – 4 thousand characters. So do not listen to the guy who says learning Mandarin is easy.

It undoubtedly poses a lifetime challenge. But let’s focus on why it is a challenge worth taking. First of all, you should not study Mandarin because it is important for your career. You should study it out of personal interest and pleasure. Apart from newspaper headings reporting China as an economic world power, the reasons to undertake this task find their roots in the richness of the most ancient civilization of the world. This can be experienced first-hand, as Mandarin is one of the languages that better mirror the depth of the culture in every word. Furthermore, being as complicated as it is, uncovering meanings and knowledge that not many possess is even more exciting. It should be this fascination that pushes you to study and practice.

When I decided to go to Shang-hai last year, I had finally taken the step to face real life in China. Entering this coun-try makes it utterly evident how tough it is for the population to keep up with the

great economic development. In about a decade, the biggest cities have undergone changes that take at least two genera-tions’ time in the rest of the world. As the middle-class grows bigger, demand rises in every sector, welcoming technological changes with great enthusiasm. Yet, most modern Chinese cities live simultane-ously in two different centuries. In this environment, the Chinese Government tries to promote the importance of tradi-tions, posing a start distinction with 50 years ago, when Confucian values were so much criticized during the Cultural Revolution. Back then, Confucius was described as “the general representative of the class of slave owners” and therefore responsible for the country’s poor condi-tions.

Being a world capital, you might think that in Shanghai, (almost 22 million people in the urban area) the great major-ity of people speak English. Well, believe me, you would be very far from the truth. The language school I attended last sum-mer found me modest accommodation not far from People’s Square, the ‘Interna-tional Hotel’. I quickly came to realize on the first day that none of the employees could speak English. I did not mind of course because that is where the challenge started. Day by day I got to understand a little bit more of the environment and I felt as if all of China was suddenly within reach. Despite comprehension difficulties, the Chinese in general reveal themselves as welcoming people. They are eager to help foreigners and have great respect for the stranger willing to study and understand their culture. However, these traditional values persist only in parts of the population, since in big cities, indi-vidualism is more and more at the centre of people’s lives.

I also came across some weird things in China. For example, by simply walking along the street you will experi-ence terrifying driving habits (be very careful if one day you have to cross the road). In addition, besides reckless taxi drivers, every evening you will see people trying to carry as much things as possible on their mopeds: 5 or 6 family members,

Fabio van Keulen is a third-year student who studied Mandarin in Shanghai for two months last summer. He writes about his experiences learning this language.

or about 2 metres of piled up trash. When walking in shopping areas, apart from sellers that seem to have a particular interest in laowai (foreigners), you will notice that most Chinese men will wrap up their t-shirt, just enough to show their belly. This funny habit is done to get some fresh air during very hot days. Oh yes, it can be extremely hot.

Of course, Shanghai is not free of problems; it is quite the opposite. Probably the most disturbing thing you will see is a lot of beggars in desperate conditions. In order to elicit sympathy and collect more money, it happens that children have one or more of their limbs cruelly amputated. These young adults pull themselves along the streets, filthy, on their bellies or on low-wheeled carts. It is pitiful and heart wrenching to watch. Nevertheless, despite its problems, Shanghai is an amazing city, although I have always been thinking that there is so much more to the Chinese culture than skyscrapers and cocky architecture. Towards the end of my journey I felt that I really wanted to experience and enjoy more of their actual traditions. Besides cities, I would like to see the Chinese countryside and above all to get to the most remote places barely visited by tourists. This is where the essence of the culture is preserved and lives on. To see if studying Mandarin is something for you, you must give it a try. I never thought it could be so interesting myself, until I applied for some lessons in my university, almost for fun. This is definitely a deci-sion I don’t regret.

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organisation. Each year Global Bri-gades mobilizes thousands of university students around the world to participate in 9 different skills-based programmes to improve the quality of life in under-resourced communities.

The programme goal of a micro-finance and business brigade is to identify community members with viable business ideas and social projects, develop busi-ness plans with the micro-entrepreneurs, and to increase the level of basic finan-cial literacy throughout the community. The aim is to provide access to business consulting services to as many micro-entrepreneurs throughout the Central region as possible, to increase the average annual income and savings of households in the communities, to build strong busi-ness skill sets throughout the community to increase the long-term success of com-munity business, and to promote com-munity development through business expansion and social projects.

The Microfinance team estab-lishes Community Development Funds, informal rural banking systems that provide savings and loan services to community members, in various com-munities. Through these facilities, loans are able to be granted for the purpose of business expansion, working capital, and/or social projects. The Microfinance and Business Brigades support this mission throughout the various stages of the business lifecycle. On a combined brigade we were lucky to experience both, laying the foundations with microfinance, and consulting another already developed business.

Ghana gave us the warmest welcome after the most beautiful sunset when crossing the Sahara. The in-country staff welcomed us at the airport and about an hour later we arrived at the lodge, home for the next weeks. The next morn-ing, we first discovered the ocean view and then some of the Central Region’s history, culture, and local language Fante.

The Global Brigades March to GhanaBy Frauke Diedrichs

Frauke Diedrichs is a third-year student who went to Ghana with the Global Brigades. The organisation’s aim is “to improve equality of life by igniting the largest student-led social responsibility movement on the planet”.

Frauke writes about her experiences with the GBs.

Maybe I am naïve. Maybe I am an idealist. Studying business econom-ics to change the world? In particular finance and consulting? Dream on. That’s what most people told me. Still, when a friend told me about this US student organisation getting students to apply their skills for the greater good in Central America and Africa I was hooked. Some research and e-mails later I knew about their European branches, primarily in the UK, and destinations outside the Ameri-cas, i.e. Ghana, as well as the different programmes Global Brigades organises. A couple of days, emails and a skype call later with the programme advisor in Gha-na and I had decided to join a combined microfinance – business brigade from Oxford University to Ekumfi Egyankwa, in Ghana’s Central Region.

Exciting. But a lot of ques-tions: What does a microfinance brigade actually do and what to prepare? Global Brigades is the world’s largest student-led health and sustainable development

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Book Review: The Economic NaturalistBy Annette Aprilana

Why is milk sold in rectangular containers, while soft drinks are sold in round ones? Why is there a light in your fridge but not in your freezer? Or why do 24-hour convenience stores have locks on their doors? These are just three of the many more questions from the collec-tion that Robert H. Frank compiled in his book “The Economic Naturalist”. From getting free peanuts in restaurants, to jaywalking in Rome, to differences in CD and DVD case sizes, the book contains many real-life situations whose expla-nations we may have found ourselves wondering about as well. In addition to economic concepts such as product de-sign, supply and demand, discount pric-ing, and marketplace signals, Frank also incorporates related subjects such as the convergence of economics with psychol-ogy.

According to Frank, the answer to “the secrets behind many everyday enigmas” is simple; it is economics. He provides his own explanations to these everyday enigmas and gives plausible reasons for their happening. In this book, he uses a “less-is-more” approach to learn the core concepts of economics. As he puts it, many introductory econom-ics courses only feed their students with theory after theory of economic concepts. In contrast, this book gives an approach emphasising familiar experiences we en-counter daily in the context of examples. It is organised into chapters based on the different economic concepts previ-ously listed and in each chapter there are several questions that relate to the topic at hand.

Frank is a Professor of Manage-ment and Economics at Cornell Uni-versity and contributes to the New York Times’ “Economic View” column every fifth Sunday. Remarkably, it was Frank’s students who inspired the writing of this book, revealing something about the relationship between the common daily life situations these students encountered and the strong economic explanations that can be found behind them. Frank is also known for his work with Thomas Gilovich and Dennis T. Regan, one of which was an author of an article we had to read for MDE: Does Studying Eco-nomics Inhibit Cooperation?

Now, don’t be discouraged to pick up this book only because it’s heavily economics infused, and don’t be afraid that the language used will be highly

In the afternoon we could apply our new language skills when visiting Egyankwa for the first time. Most days followed this pattern: early breakfast, preparations for the days (workshops, materials, etc.), before heading off to Egyankwa, one of the villages served by GB whose inhabit-ants we were going to work with for the next week. During the day we either did door to door interviews with the inhabit-ants, gave workshops or spent time with the Community Development Fund leaders. The CDF is the heart of every microfinance programme. It takes the role of a community bank and finan-cial education provider. The leaders are volunteers nominated and elected by the community. We were impressed by their commitment, dedication, and financial knowledge. In the evening, it was time to prepare for the next day: summarise find-ings, prepare teaching materials, or work at the business plan for the consulting part of the brigade. Every Global Brigades com-

munity has a social enterprise, whose profits are used for community develop-ment, e.g. scholarships. After a period of stagnation, the community’s event rental service needed a new perspective. Work-ing with the staff, the books, interviewing a competitor, and a very short night later, a new business plan was ready to be im-plemented. After days of fun and a lot of work, it was time for a treat: an afternoon at the beach (empty long, white beaches with palm trees) and a visit to Capecoast Castle, a much darker chapter in Ghana’s history. The fortress served as a shipping point for slaves, first under the Dutch, fol-lowed by the Portuguese and British. We spent our last day at the local market in Mankesim, where you could buy anything from (fitted) clothes, to dried chameleon, machetes to food like plantains, tiger nuts or foufou. Back to Accra through crazy traffic and saying goodbye to the amaz-ing people we worked with. Then jumped back on that plane, waving goodbye to Ghana’s rainforest, crossing the Sahara

once more and having stroopwafels for breakfast.

If you are interested in micro-finance, Roodman’s ‘Due Diligence’ is an unbiased review and very good read. If you want to know more about Global Brigades check their webpage (www.globalbrigades.org). And if “GB The Netherlands” finally gets campus recog-nition, you can look forward to a first all-Dutch brigade.

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academic. People not studying economics can pick up this book and be entertained by how most of the events surrounding our lives can be explained by economics.

The great thing about the way it’s organised is that even within the chapters, each different question acts as a subhead-ing, which means that this book doesn’t require you to read all its pages within one period of time. On top of that, we have an advantage as economics students because we already have an understand-ing of basic economic concepts. How-ever, Frank still succeeds in making it an insightful read for economics students well versed in economic theory, so getting bored is quite difficult. Unlike others who don’t study economics, we can flip the pages to whichever questions interest us and we don’t have to worry about not understanding the economic phenomena being explained.

Below are several questions from the book that can give you a better pic-ture of what the book encompasses. The answers range from being a very econom-ics related answer, to a not so economics related one. I won’t spoil the book for you, so here are some questions which will show the gist of it:

Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets? Why is it legal to drive while eating a burger or drinking a coffee but not while talking on a mobile phone? Why do women’s clothes always button from the left, while men’s clothes always button from the right? Why are brown eggs more expensive than white ones in some countries? And why do female models earn so much more than male models?

Although people who expect very detailed economic explanations might be slightly disappointed, I would still recommend you to read this book if you want to be enlightened by the dif-ferent perspective that Robert Frank can show you. It is a fun and entertaining read, and it can get you to think of the economics behind other daily enigmas you may find around you.

As for the questions in the very beginning of this article, here are the short and summarised answers (they all follow the cost-benefit principle):

Why is milk sold in rectangular contain-ers, while soft drinks are sold in round ones?

The cylindrical shape can with-stand the pressure that can build up from carbonated drinks. As with most soft drinks, people tend to consume it straight from the container rather than pour it in a glass. This explains the hand-friendli-ness of the shape. Milk on the other hand isn’t usually consumed straight from the container. It is also usually stored in re-frigerated cabinets in supermarkets. Rec-tangular shapes economise shelf-space because more milk containers can fit in one shelf. In this way, supermarkets can cut costs for not having to make larger refrigerated shelf space to accommodate cylindrical milk containers.

Why is there a light in your fridge but not in your freezer?

Producers know that people open the refrigerator more often than the freezer. Adding a light to either com-partment is a fixed cost because it does not vary the amount of times you open the door. However, unless there are few consumers who, based on individual preferences, would like to have a light in

the freezer compartment too, producers will typically not produce refrigerators of such kind for the extra cost.

Why do 24-hour convenience stores have locks on their doors?

This is not a matter of why the stores choose to have locks on their doors. It is simply the standard of the door production installed in that par-ticular 24-hour shop. It is cheaper for industrial door producers to make doors the same way regardless of whether they are making it for normal shops or for 24-hour convenience stores.

I hope this review helped you get a better idea of “The Economic Natu-ralist”, and if you do end up reading the book, I certainly hope it was worth your time.

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The Olympics: Bliss from the Gods ora Curse from the Games?

By Dea Tusha Winter sports aficionados start-ed off this year with something to look forward to. For 17 cold, but exciting Feb-ruary days the Russian city of Sochi was host to the Winter Olympics. This event had all that the Olympics encompass: the glamour, the medals and the thrill of the competition. Memorable moments were recorded, despite the opening ceremony’s unfortunate technical glitch, and con-tinued all through the duration of the games. The US, Norway and Canada were among the top countries in terms of the number of medals they collected, while the Dutch followed closely by absolutely dominating the speedskating events with 23 medals. But the main honour goes to the Russian Olympic athletes, who man-aged to bring home the most medals.

Though, that is not the only thing that Russia has come in first. With a staggering $51 billion in national investment, the Winter Olympics in Sochi broke the record for the most expensive Olympic Games ever. The city of Sochi, home to a mere 343000 people, was a small town on the Black Sea coast with a difficult terrain, underdeveloped infrastructure and no facilities to host an international sport event of this scale, when it was chosen by the International Olympic Committee in 2007. Seven years and an over bloated budget later (the initial investment package announced by the government was around $12 bil-lion), Sochi is transformed into a modern touristic venue of Olympic standards. A costly show-off or a smart long-term investment? Undoubtedly, every Olym-pics event leaves worldwide audiences flabbergasted and in awe, but once the enthusiasm has died out, many are left wondering: Was it even worth it?

Based on the unabashed and fervent willingness of bidding countries to become hosts, one would expect the answer to be a resounding “yes”. But numerous scholar articles and case stud-ies point to a feeble “maybe” at best. The arguments in favour of such tremendous investment expenses draw ever thinner as the budget going into them becomes larger, with every new Games host coun-try reaching a new record for expendi-ture. Outshining previous hosts, as well as other current bidders has become a

competition in itself, a fierce race of huge projects with its own gold medal reward: signaling to the rest of the world the economic prowess of the winner, placing it in the eyes of millions and attracting glorifying publicity.

Hosting a mega-event such as the Olympics surely helps in some aspects. The international recognition is often argued to help boost tourism in the country, not only during the Games’ craze, but in the longer term as well. This was certainly the case for Barcelona in 1992 and Sydney in 2000. The develop-ment of the former was a testified success, despite the economic turmoil Europe was witnessing at the time. There is also a general consensus that the 2000 games helped to put Australia (and especially New South Wales) on the map for many tourists, a long-lasting effect, whose ben-efits the country down under are reaping to this day. It also helps to improve the infrastructure of the host city, opening up jobs in construction, logistics and the service sector, and revitalising the city altogether. Or at least, these are the ex-ante claims that many studies point at. For the sake of transparency, such studies are often criticised in scholarly circles for their potential bias, as they are usually commissioned by parties with an interest in hosting the Games. The number of academic articles on ex-post effects seems to be significantly smaller and paint a much less optimistic picture.

Although investment in infra-structure increases substantially, much of it goes into sporting facilities and build-ings with not much use after the seven-teen day Olympic wonder. In fact, a great amount of money is necessary for the continuous maintenance of these build-ings. Despite requiring $500 million in maintenance every year, the abandoned and unutilised venues in Athens look as

if they have been victims of the rage of Olympic gods. But Athens is not alone; several venues in Beijing (whose cost for organising the 2008 Olympic Games topped the list until Sochi with $40 bil-lion), Munich (1972) and Sarajevo (1984) have had the same destiny. Countries bidding to host the Olympics do so for a variety of reasons, ranging from popularity with the public, to showing off their development, to creating future growth opportunities. But these should be weighed against the expenses, which are paid off with taxpay-ers’ money. Not only do these projects start big, but they usually end up costing several times more than expected, due to unexpected costs, corruption and vested interests. In retrospect, Greece seems to find itself in its present debt-ridden situ-ation partly due to hosting the Olympics in 2004. The government deficit during the Games year saw an increase of 6.1% of GDP, while the expected revenues from tourism did not pan out in the following years, and the increase in employment was found to be insignificant.

Beijing seems to have enjoyed all the short-term benefits, such as the devel-opment of the advertising, environment and sports sectors. It also seems to have become more attractive for private inves-tors. However, economists are less than enthusiastic about the long-term impact, and only time will tell if this is an Olym-pic success story. And while some more time will need to pass before experts can investigate if the Sochi Olympics were a blessing or a curse to Russia, the rest of us turn our heads to the next mega-event, the football World Cup in Brazil later this year. Because when it comes to spending huge amounts of money on a month-long event, the world is all in with the highest degree of sportsmanship.

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BerkeleyiciousBy Muhammad Awaid Irshad

Muhammad Awaid Irshad is a third-year bachelor student who went on a semester-exchange to the University of California, Berkeley.

I was surprised on the day that I received an email from Utrecht Uni-versity stating that I had been selected for the prized exchange to the University of California Berkeley, situated near San Francisco. My emotions were mixed. I was honoured to go to one of the most coveted exchange destinations available to UU students, but on the other hand I was nervous as well: an elite university probably meant that the library would be-come my new home. People told me very different stories about their experiences at Berkeley. Some said it was very hard, some said it was beautiful and others said it was the craziest party time of their lives. If I had to comment on their opinions now, I would say they were all true.

I arrived at the university with a Dutch USE friend of mine, Benjamin Bredero. We were both confused from the moment we arrived in the US to the mo-ment we were trying to get a room. We could not manage to get a place on the first day due to some maintenance issues, so we had to stay in California’s famous ghetto, Oakland. There was only one thing we could say, “Man, I have definite-ly seen this in a movie somewhere!” In-deed, everything seemed like a movie set. Beautiful Californian weather with the sun shining on the sea and the glorious Golden Gate Bridge in the background

were sights to remember. On the day that we could move into the university hous-ing, the first thing to greet us at the door was a massive free beer keg. The housing was gezellig and the vibe was amazing, but the best part about the atmosphere were the fellow Berkeley students. Each one of them was an expert in his/her field and a whiz kid in his/her respective high schools. Still, that didn’t stop them from enjoying the occasional beer or ten. All of them seemed like nice, relaxed people with whom I had discussions that often went deep into the night.

Berkeley is different from all the other American universities because it is the best public university in the world, and there is no doubt that you feel this in your daily life there. Since it is a public university, it attracts people from all income groups. However, that fact makes it even more competitive than Ivy League universities. Every year Berkeley receives hundreds of thousands of applications and they admit only the highly motivated and high achieving students. This creates an intellectual vibe, even during normal conversations with fellow students. One striking feature about the university cul-ture is its idealistic attitude. The students are extremely connected with themes like free speech, feminism, non-racialism and gay rights. They see America as a place where every one should be accepted. Even though this is not the case in the country as a whole, it is definitely the case in Berkeley.

What about the college spirit? On almost every wall you see large signs saying “GO BEARS!”. Regardless of what your opinion is about college spirit, you cannot suppress the pride that comes from within you when identifying yourself as a Golden Bear. On top of that, the university officials make sure they inculcate that spirit in you. The college anthems are based upon glorifying the Bears and making fun of Stanford, their archrival university. Even the Internet connection is called “Air-Bears”. And when it gets late at night, you call the “Bear-Walk” who will then send a Berke-ley student to walk with you so you can feel safe.

But I need to break it to you first before you get really excited about the parties and awesome weather: the studies are definitely harder than in our uni-versity. The presentations, assignments, exams, homework, everything is hard to follow sometimes. But it’s not as bad as it seems. Berkeley provides you with an opportunity to utilise the best resources in the world, with quality professors as well as facilitating technology to explore whatever you like. The best thing about Berkeley is walking through the massive and historic doors of the university and knowing that some of the most distin-guished economists in the world, like George Akerlof and Oliver Williamson, work here everyday. We even had classes with Noble Prize winners and US former State Secretaries who gave daily lectures.

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You are free to choose whichever types of courses you want on whichever level you deem suitable. In my case, I had my life all set in becoming an investment banker. However, when I took classes in development economics at Berkeley, I re-alised that it turned out to be something that I have been searching for all the time. I wrote papers and did research at the Development Economics faculty. They connected me to individuals I would not have imagined talking to. I had a personal meeting with the Nobel prize winning economist Oliver Williamson regarding transaction cost economics, and with Mr. Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labour regarding the labuor policies in the US. Not only did it give me an opportunity to learn and develop, it also gave me an opportunity to discover what I really wanted to choose as a career, and improved my knowledge of economics.

People say the workload is hard to handle. But I would say if you plan it wisely, then there’s time for everything in this exchange. I managed to take up an internship at the Development Econom-ics faculty while taking my GRE exam, at-tended to my studies, and I still had time to travel. And let me tell you, California is the best place to be for traveling. In a five-hour ride, you get to Los Angeles, which is famous for its glamorous Hollywood Boulevard. Then two hours away, you get to the most sought after destination for the surfers of the world, the ever-sunny city of San Diego. Not to forget, if you want to party and gamble, you can always head towards Las Vegas. If you are into the natural beauty aspect of traveling, you are still in for a treat. Close to Berkeley are the tallest redwood trees in the world, which make for the best camping destina-

tion. You can head out to the Grand Can-yon or the Yosemite National Park as well. Last but not the least, if you are looking for the technology capital of the world, you are basically half an hour away from Silicon Valley where the headquarters of Apple, Google, Facebook and many more are. But even if you don’t want to travel, you are still living in San Francisco, which is known for its openness, peacefulness and good quality of life.

Overall, I would say Berkeley was a trip of a lifetime for me. It gave me academic excellence, professional experi-ence, inspirational encounters, fabulous parties and memorable travels. It’s some-thing I would not only recommend to the students of Utrecht University, but would also vouch for any day.

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Roughly a month ago, this year’s ECU’92 conference took place in the prestigious Aula of the Academic Building, attended not only by the typical active member crowd, but also by a boundless variety of USE students. The omni-present and increasingly relevant topic of competition took centre stage, to be expected with a con-ference titled The Culture of Com-petition: The Way To The Top. Surprisingly, the stage was shared by the topic of collaboration. It is indisputable that the speakers themselves contributed a great deal this insightful afternoon, and the attractiveness of the day.

With the mesmerising one hour interview/college tour of Olympic Swimming Champion Pieter van den Hoogenband lead-

ing the way, cultural economist Arjo Klamer and young award winning entrepreneur Bernd Damme shared their insights and secrets with the 100 attendees. In the interview, hosted by Prof Dr. Hans Schenk, Pieter talked about his athletic and personal achieve-ments, challenges he had to over-come, aspects in his life that drove him to become so competitive, and the rather surprising conclu-sion that competition is a lot about collaboration. Before the Olympics in Athens 2004, he invited all his competitors to come to Holland to train with him.

In the second speech of the day, Arjo Klamer, currently a professor at the Erasmus Univer-sity in Rotterdam, challenged the audience to think about the pur-

pose that underlies their doings. The overarching goal which each and every one follows became much more important than com-petition per sé. Only if we pursue our dreams are we able to strive through competition and collabo-ration – depending on the respec-tive situation.

Finally, Bernd Damme inspired all of us with his great enthusiasm not to give up, and to follow our visions and simply try things. We learned that entrepre-neurship is a lot about collabora-tion: Ideas do not appear out of nothing. All in all and disregard-ing the usual rainy weather, the 20th of February was a fantas-tic day for all people involved, whether speaker, organiser, host, or attendee.

The Culture of CompetitionBy Phillip Aring

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Life Hacks

How to light a match in the wind:

For those of you walking in the footsteps of Bear Grylls and others, this could be a life-or-death hack. The last match to light your fire, protecting you from the beasts around you. Make small shavings towards the match’s striking end. When the match is lit, the curled strips take fire, giving you a better chance of a strong flame.

How to clean that dirty keyboard:

Some students use their laptops as multi-functional plates when eating. The crumbs turn into all sorts of funky organisms yet to be discovered, so cleaning is probably quite a good idea once in a while. If you don’t have a blowdryer, use sticky notes to gather the hard-to-reach places on your keyboard. Health costs should decrease dramatically.

Cold feet:

During the terrible Dutch winters, cold feet can plague one’s happiness. Many will know the unfortunate law that putting socks on cold feet keeps them cold. Besides walking on hot coals or putting your feet in the fireplace, you can try something much safer. Take a pair of socks and let them get warm on your gas heater. Place your cold feet in these warm socks and you’re set.

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