Economist and Opinion Writer
Heleen Mees was Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy. Before joining NYU’s Wagner, Mees was Assistant Professor in Economics at Tilburg University and researcher at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam. Her research focuses on monetary policy and the macroeconomic consequences of the rise of China and other emerging economies. The central thesis of her PhD thesis is that China's boom caused the financial crisis and ensuing economic recession. Mees is currently working on a field experiment in China, as part of the behavioral economics program. Last year she did research on the prevalence of money illusion in China, holding a survey among more than 300 individuals in Beijing.
Mees is a contributor to Project Syndicate and the Financial Times' Economists Forum. Her work has also been published in The Financial Times, The New York Times, Foreign Policy and Le Monde. From 2006 - 2010 she was columnist for NRC Handelsblad and after that for the Financieele Dagblad. Mees is the author of three books; her latest Between Greed and Desire – The World between Wall Street andMain Street was published in 2009. While greed has had a destructive impact on the economy, the desire to build a better life is still the main source of social progress.
In 2006 Mees co-founded Women on Top, an organization that advocates more women in top jobs. As an opponent of glass ceilings and the old boys’ network, Mees campaigned for 30% representation of women on all company boards. The Dutch parliament subsequently passed legislation requiring company boards to strive for gender balance, i.e. minimum 30% representation of each sex on both the supervisory board as well as the executive board. The European Union is following suit and is planning EU-wide legislation for gender balance on company boards.
Before, Mees worked at Ernst & Young’s headquarters in New York, the European Commission in Brussels and the Dutch Treasury in The Hague. She was an intern in Dutch parliament. Mees graduated both in economics and law. She is fluent in English and Dutch and speaks Chinese (Mandarin), French and Italian. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Housing Bubbles and the Dutch Disease. (Working Paper).
NY Service Economy - A Template for a Future Suburbia. Here, There, Everywhere, DroogLab Amsterdam.
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Are Chinese Individuals Prone to Money Illusion?
(Accepted for publication by Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics).
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Why China's Growth Model Makes Sense. Project Syndicate, May 16, 2013.
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Financial Crisis or Innovation Crisis? Both!. Project Syndicate, May, 2, 2013.
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Interest Rates Should Take Blame for Recession. Financial Times Economists's Forum, March 1, 2013.
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Synthesising Views on West's Poor Growth. Financial Times Economists' Forum, 12-12-2012.
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Approximating the DGP of China's Quarterly GDP. Applied Economics Volume 45, Issue 24, 2013.
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Why Do Chinese Households Save So Much? VoxEU, August 28, 2012.
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PhD-propositions in English and Mandarin Chinese. VoxEU, August 28, 2012.
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Why Do Chinese Households Save So Much? Journal paper on China's household savings rate. This version August 2012. (Under Review).
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The Fed Should Buy Stocks instead of Bonds. Financial Times Economists' Blog, August 6, 2012.
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Changing Fortunes - How China's Boom Caused the Financial Crisis. Ph.D. thesis, August 28, 2012.
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Evaluating the Global Crisis. Public Administration Review, Volume 72, Issue 6, Pages 779 - 949, November/December 2012.
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How China's Boom Caused the Financial Crisis. Foreign Policy, January 17, 2012.
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U.S. Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble. Journal of Monetary Economics. (Under Review).
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Real Money in China, Money Illusion in America. In VoxEU on November 20, 2011.
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Are Chinese Individuals Prone to Money Illusion? Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. 11-149/4. (Under Review).
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The Global Saving Glut Will Hold Bond Yields Down. In VoxEU on August 8, 2011.
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U.S. Monetary Policy and the Saving Glut. In VoxEU on March 24, 2011.
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The False Panacea of Labor Market Flexibility. By Project Syndicate, March 22, 2011.
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Approximating the DGP of China's Quarterly GDP. By Econometric Institute Research Papers in 2011. (Under Review).
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Does News on Real Chinese GDP Growth Impact Stock Markets? By Econometric Institute Research Papers in 2011. (Under Review).
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Going Dutch? Not So Fast!. In The New York Times on May 24, 2009.
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Going Dutch? Not So Fast! (extended version). In NRC Handelsblad on May 10, 2009.
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Between Greed and Desire - The World between Wall Street and Main Street.
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Does Legalizing Prostitution Work By Project Syndicate on January 23, 2009.
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Why We Must Break the Male Cartel in the Work Place. In the Financial Times on April 23, 2008.
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The Cost of the Gender Gap. By Project Syndicate on August 29, 2007.
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China is Buying Europe. In The International Herald Tribune on July 29, 2007.
Beyond the Gender Gap. By Project Syndicate on January 31, 2007.
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Affirmative Action for Europe. In Le Monde on December 2, 2005.
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