Kristof De Witte

KU Leuven

Kristof De Witte is a full professor in Education Economics and Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven, Belgium, and he holds the chair in ‘Effectiveness and Efficiency of Educational Innovations’ at United Nations University (UNU-MERIT) at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Kristof De Witte is further a Fellow member of the CESifo Network. At KU Leuven he is the program director of the ‘Master in Economic Education’ and the founding member and director of the research group ‘Leuven Economics of Education Research’.

The research interests of Kristof De Witte comprise education economics, performance evaluation, and political economy. Among his more than 100 Web of Science publications, he published 71 papers in Q1 journals of which 26 papers were in the top 10% of journals and 10 papers were in the top 5% of journals. Stimulated by interdisciplinary research funding, his work touches upon multiple disciplines which are reflected in publications in the leading journals from various academic fields, including ‘American Sociological Review’, ‘The Economic Journal’, ‘Journal of Urban Economics’, ‘European Journal of Operational Research’, ‘Government Information Quarterly’, ‘Economics of Education Review’, ‘Labour Economics’, ‘Exceptional Children’, ‘World Development’, and ‘Educational Research Review’.

De Witte is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the ‘2021 Pioneer Award’ of KU Leuven (10,000 euro), the ‘2020 Laureate of the Academy’ award from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (10,000 euro) and the ‘2021 CELSA Service to Society Award’ (honorific), two international prizes for his doctoral dissertation (Biennial „Edgard Milhaud“ Prize of CIRIEC – 10,000 euro; Annual “Hans-Jürgen-Ewers-Prize”– 2,500 euro), eight paper prizes, an award for his undergraduate thesis, and an award at the end of secondary education. He spent academic visits at, among others, Columbia University, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung and Aston University. According to IDEAS (last 10 years publications ranking), he is among the top 5% of economists worldwide.