The theme coordinators provide focus and direction; they are the intellectual leaders of Netspar. They recruite senior and junior researchers and Ph.D. candidates for which Netspar grants them a substantial budget of €1 million. The theme coordinators have considerable discretion in allocating these funds within the limits of their budget plans. This amount of money should be sufficient to fund the research time of two Ph.D. candidates for a four-year period, four senior researchers for a three-year period, and two tenure-track assistant professors for a six-year period.