Rob Alessie retires: four retrospectives

Professor and Netspar-affiliated researcher Rob Alessie retired this month. From a walking encyclopedia to a close friend. Four people, including one of his PhD graduates, two former colleagues and a former student assistant, look back on their collaboration with Rob.

Marike Knoef, Rob’s PhD graduate

“Rob Alessie was my supervisor. In fact, as a PhD student I started in a Netspar project run by Rob and Arthur van Soest. After my PhD, we did a theme project together. That was a fine collaboration in which we complemented each other. He was also a member of the Editorial Board of Netspar.

Rob is very helpful and I learned a lot from him. If you ask Rob a question, he always grabs a pen and paper to write down the issue in equations. I learned from him how to organize problems in your head that way. Furthermore, you can say of Rob that he is a walking encyclopedia as far as research literature is concerned. He knows the entire literature in the field of household finance by heart.

What makes Rob special is that he oversees both the big picture and the smallest details. For example, if he is on a PhD committee, he can ask questions about footnotes. I haven’t seen that with anyone else except Rob. At the same time, he also has a very good grasp of the big picture. I find that combination impressive.

“Make it gezellig” – that’s another lesson I learned from him. When I was a PhD student, I worked in Tilburg and Rob in Utrecht, together with Adriaan Kalwij, my co-supervisor. After talking about research, we would go somewhere for dinner before taking the train back home. So both the result and the process are relevant to him.

All in all, Rob made a great contribution to Netspar and to science in general. In doing so, he was open to anyone with econometric questions, no matter from whom. He was also active within Centerdata and could be found at the CBS (Statistics Netherlands). Thus, he contributed to data collection for research. By helping build the data infrastructure, he improved not only his own research, but also the research of many others.”

Arthur van Soest, former colleague of Rob’s

“I have known Rob since the early 1980s. He was doing PhD research on an NWO project at the time and I first worked as a student assistant and later also became one of Arie Kapteyn’s ‘sailors’.

Rob and I attended quite a few conferences together. My first was the Econometric Society conference in Boston in 1985. We flew to New York and drove to Boston in two rented cars. On the way back, we took a detour via Niagara Falls and Toronto to leave Rob there with a cousin of his. Later I found out that Rob had family everywhere: in Rome, Madrid – whatever congress we attended, Rob always managed to attach a family visit to it.

I also have fond memories of the time Rob and I worked together as supervisors of Stefan Hochguertel, one of his first PhD students, when he was not yet a professor. Rob is an extremely conscientious researcher with an unparalleled knowledge of the literature and an eye for the big picture, but also for the smallest detail. This was also evident during our later collaboration within Netspar, where together we tried to keep one of the first theme projects on track.

Officially, Rob is now retired, but no one believes he is going to sit behind the geraniums. Being on a board is not his hobby, but his research interests are far from gone. We will still hear from him regularly at Netspar as well. Rob, all the best to you!”

Jochem de Bresser, former colleague of Rob’s

“I first met Rob at the International Pension Workshop during my PhD period. He then served on my PhD committee, was my supervisor at the University of Groningen, and we supervised Bart van Leeuwen’s PhD research together.

Rob is a tremendously warm person and with one hundred percent integrity. For example, when we moved to Groningen, he organized dinners to help us get grounded in the north. Professionally, he has encyclopedic knowledge in the field of microeconometrics of household behavior in general and aging and pensions in particular. In doing so, he is interested both in the details of the pension system and in the methods used to analyze the data.

I am grateful to Rob for our collaboration and especially for allowing the line between colleague and friend to blur – I think it is rare for him when a collaboration does not develop into a friendship.”

Bas Werker, former student assistant to Rob

“In the early 1990s, I was a student assistant at the then Economic Institute of Tilburg. I did econometric analyses for Rob on the development of the shortage of teachers in primary and secondary education.

What always struck me about Rob? That I once showed him my analyses, after which he concluded that I had done a good job. Only he still had a question: “That R-squared here, it’s 37.12 percent now, but last week it was 37.08 percent. What did you adjust?”

I hadn’t realized I had adjusted anything, but Rob was right. I found that impressive then, and still do now, and learned from it to be accurate. That has always stayed with me.”