Jakob de Haan

“Which is the fairest firm of all?”

In an article in Financial World, Jakob de Haan and Wijnand Nuijts explain why the Netherlands financial supervisor decided to expand its oversight of financial services firms by holding up a mirror to ethics and they discuss the impact this has had on Dutch firms. They conclude that to restore public confidence in financial institutions, financial services firms need to change some aspects of their businesses, including organizational behavior and culture. But these changes require time and patience and a hard look in the mirror. Change for the better starts with supervisors making executives aware of potential problems and making them willing to act. That triggers what may prove to be a prolonged trajectory of change at the organization. De Nederlandsche Bank’s (DNB) experience is that most financial institutions that have been assessed follow up on the assessment on their own initiative. Providing a mirror apparently helps.

Jakob de Haan has published extensively on issues like public debt, monetary policy, central bank independence, exchange rates, banking, political and economic freedom and European integration. He is member of the editorial board of Public Choice, European Union Politics, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and the Journal of Common Market Studies. He has been President of the European Public Choice Society and editor of the European Journal of Political Economy. He has done research for several organizations, including the OECD, the European Commission, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Central Bank of Aruba. Currently, he is also advisor to the European Parliament on financial stability issues.

Jakob de Haan is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and a CESifo Research Network Fellow. Currently, he is the President of The European Money and Finance Forum (SUERF). Mr. de Haan was Head of Research of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) between 2009 and 2020. Before joining DNB, he was Scientific Director of SOM, the graduate school and research institute of the faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen, for eleven years. Jakob de Haan graduated from the University of Groningen, where he also earned his PhD.