Meet Jan Stoop

When I came in as a student at Tilburg University, I wanted to be an accountant. I had seen examples in my surroundings where people became filthy rich by becoming an accountant, and that appealed to me. However, when I got my first class in accountancy, I knew right away that becoming an accountant was not meant for me. However, we got these other economics courses such as macroeconomics and microeconomics, and I loved that! That is when I knew I wanted to become a regular economist. From there on, studying did not feel like a burden. I wanted to know what the books had to say, especially when I came in touch with behavioural economics and doing experiments. This renewed interest quickly resulted in the wish of becoming a professor. It has been a career goal of mine for quite some time now, and it is highly rewarding to see things work out. 

Teaching

How you prepare for teaching differs a lot per professor. I have been teaching Experimental Economics for about ten years now and because of the process of repetition, less preparation is needed. Students watch the course material in the videos that are provided. During class, we then go over examples that are closely related to the course material. This always ignites nice discussions, also about the ethics of doing (field) experiments. Comparing the various students I teach: I do like teaching the master students the most, since there is more interaction. Typically, the first-year students are rather shy. When it comes to master students, this is all gone. People stand up and if I say something that they do not believe or do not agree with, they challenge me. I love that a lot! 

'My advice for students: do what you love'

Research

Coming up with a research topic and ultimately a research question is always difficult. For me, the research method comes first. Based on that method, I will formulate the question. I like to walk around while looking for and thinking about opportunities. Only after observing something interesting, I will come up with an intriguing research question. I see something interesting happening and then I think: ‘how can I use this to do research?’ For example, if someone receives a misdelivered envelope full of cash, I would be interested in investigating whether the recipient will keep the cash or return it to the sender. I will then come up with a method as a base for my research, and the question comes afterwards. 

My research is mostly concerned with the measurement of social preferences of humans. I do this by means of lab experiments. In these lab experiments, (usually) students are playing a game behind a computer. These games gather insights into the social preferences of the participants. Additional to the lab experiments, I conduct field experiments in a so-called natural environment. The insights from these experiments will be compared to evaluate to what degree the social preferences measured in the lab are in accordance with those in the real world. Lastly, besides research on social preferences, I study how to design optimal labour contracts. In short, this means I study when contract employees exert most effort for their boss.