Arnold Heertje

Arnold Heertje
Arnold Heertje (2009)
Born	(1934-02-19) 19 February 1934 (age 83) Breda, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Institution	University of Amsterdam
Alma mater	University of Amsterdam

Arnold Heertje (born 19 February 1934) is a Dutch economist, Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam, writer and columnist. He became more generally known for his opposition to the Betuweroute.

Heertje grew up primarily in Arnhem. Due to their Jewish background, during the Second World War the whole family had to go in hiding after November 12, 1942. The eight-year-old Arnold ended up with a Reformed family in the Haarlemmermeer. Impressed by their faith, he planned to become a minister. Together with his parents he survived the war. After the war he wanted to join the Reformed church, but his mother forbade him. According to his mother, he would not be allowed to choose a church until he was eighteen. Heertje was not only impressed by the faith of people that had hid him, but also by their poverty. He later remarked, that he "was impressed by the fact that all of the hiding places that existed were with families that were extremely poor. This made [him] raise the question of where that poverty actually came from. [He] wanted to know more about it and went to study economics..."

From 1951 to 1956 Heertje studied economics at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and received his MA cum laude. At the same university he received his doctorate in 1960 for his thesis entitled "The price theory of the oligopoly". In 1958 he started teaching at the all Jewish Maimonides Lyceum in Amsterdam, and continued to do so until 1968. In the years 1963 and 1964 he taught at the Baarnsch Lyceum in Baarn.

In 1962 Heertje became known through his book De kern van de economie. It is sold over a few hundred thousand copies, and new editions are still printed.

From 1964 to 1999 he was Professor of Political Economy at the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, and from 1997 to 2006 he was Professor in the History of Economic Science. He retired from the University of Amsterdam 3 May 2006, where he had taught for over forty years. As of 1999 he was till teaching at the Vossius Gymnasium in Amsterdam. Heertje is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences since 1997.