Jakob de Haan is former Head of Research of De Nederlandsche Bank and Professor of Political Economy, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He has been Scientific Director of SOM, the graduate school and research institute of the faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen. He graduated at the University of Groningen, where he also got his Ph.D. He has published extensively on issues like public debt, monetary policy, central bank independence, political and economic