‘If you start something, you have to finish it’

In February 2026, Charles van Marrewijk will retire and say goodbye to Utrecht University. To mark the occasion, we spoke to him about his career, his contribution to economic science and to the Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.), where he was research director for many years and eventually also head of department. This month also saw the publication of Handel als wapen (Trade as a weapon), a provocative and highly topical book he wrote with Steven Brakman and Tristan Kohl, which focuses on the economic dimension of international power.

The timing of the publication of Trade as a Weapon is spot on.

The book had been in the pipeline for some time, but developments in America accelerated its release. Trump is doing his best to keep things very up to date and to destroy a lot. He has been doing this for almost a year now and he is continuing to do so. Still, you shouldn't try to be completely up to date. It makes little sense, precisely because developments are happening so quickly. The idea behind this book is to provide some background on general trade developments: what are the issues at stake, and how do they work? We want to create a framework of sorts so that people can better understand the situation. It is intended for a broad audience and contains many examples.

Is writing books something you want to do more often after your retirement?

In my opinion, I no longer have to consider the less enjoyable aspects of the work, and now I only focus on the enjoyable things. The idea is that I will continue to write articles, and I do indeed want to write books. I also think that they will receive more attention.

Would you like to take us through your career and tell us, for example, how you ended up in economics?

I started at university late, at the age of 22. You often hear of people with three secondary school diplomas, but I have four! When I was at primary school, I just wasn't interested in school; I was very playful at that age. The primary school therefore decided I should go to mavo secondary school. But the Cito test recommended pre-university education (vwo). So, I went to a transition class for secondary (havo) and pre-university education (vwo), but I didn't make it, so I transferred on to the second year of the mavo secondary school. Actually, both the primary school and the Cito test were right. I had the potential, but it didn't show at the time.

At the mavo, I was also reasonably good at drawing, so I thought it would be fun to go to art school. But you need to have completed havo secondary school for that. So, I did that first. However, I was not admitted to art school – quite rightly, by the way. My mother said: why don't you become a horticulturist? Because I come from a family of horticulturists – in the flower business. And I went to horticultural college. Well, let's just say it wasn't really my forte. But... the good thing about that college was that I had a great economics teacher, and no one else was interested in economics except me. That teacher was good at explaining models and modelling. I really enjoyed that, and that was when I decided to do pre-university education after all and went to study economics. This teacher was very important in that regard. The other important influence was the invitation to become a student assistant later, in Rotterdam. Studying at university went very quickly, so I kind of made up for lost time there, you could say.

But you also have a diploma from that horticultural school.

If you start something, you have to finish it. That is my opinion. I worked in my father's garden business for six months. But I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. After a few months, I plucked up the courage to tell my father that I didn't really want to do it. To which he replied: if you don't want to do it, you shouldn't. I had been really dreading that conversation, but he simply felt that if I didn't like it, I shouldn't do it. I was very grateful for that.

After secondary school, I went to study economics in Rotterdam, and I was also asked to become a student assistant in International Economics. That was my first intensive introduction to science. Casper de Vries was very important to me in that regard. He was my thesis supervisor, had just returned from the United States, and encouraged me to study there as well. In the United States, I spent a year and a half doing research for my thesis at Purdue University.

Incidentally, I shared a room in Rotterdam with Guido Imbens (who later won the Nobel Prize – ed.). Yes, some people go a little further than others.

Did your PhD research form the basis for topics you subsequently worked on?

No, fortunately not. My general advice is that you should do things that you enjoy and find interesting. It did provide a very good basis on which to build. I worked there on a thesis entitled Three essays in mathematical economics. A good title is half the battle – and this was not a good title. It consisted of three articles stapled together. That was also the standard in America.

At the time, I was very theoretically oriented. Gradually, and rightly so, much more empirical relevance was added. The connection between theory, empiricism and policy has become more important. In that respect, I actually followed what was happening in science in general.

After returning to the Netherlands, I sent an open letter to all universities in the Netherlands offering economics programmes and ended up in Groningen. I completed my dissertation there and enjoyed working there for three years. Incidentally, I still collaborate with people from Groningen, particularly Steven Brakman and Harry Garretsen. I then had the opportunity to return to Erasmus University as an associate professor. I come from a family of horticulturalists in the Westland region, so that was also a bit closer to home. Finally, after eighteen years in Rotterdam, the opportunity arose to move to Utrecht. And here I am now, eighteen years on, since 2008.

Can you tell us something about your career path?

In the beginning, I was very focused on theory and new developments in that field. Gradually, I became more interested in politics and society, and at the same time, I also became interested in policy relevance. It was a gradual process. Over the last twenty years, we have regularly been in contact with the House of Representatives and have been asked by the ministry to conduct specific research issues. I enjoy that too, because it really benefits society. I think theoretical development is very important for science in general, and I love that too. But I want to continue to focus more on those policy-relevant aspects.

What I enjoy has always been the decisive motivation for going into science, and international economics has always played a leading role in that. I feel at home in Utrecht because here, economics is seen as part of a whole. There are all kinds of factors that play a role; there are historical and geographical aspects to economic developments. In recent years, I have mainly tried to examine the connection between economics and other disciplines. Because that, in particular, allows you to think one step further.

What do you consider to be your most important contribution to the field?

Of course, you can look at what is most frequently cited, or what you are best known for. I think that would be my work on geographical economics. We have written articles on the clustering of economic activity and on urban development, for example, as well as books that are cited quite frequently – generally speaking, a lot of work in the field of international trade. I have also done a lot of work on comparative advantages. Together with Jeroen Hinloopen, I wrote an article in which we explain that it is difficult to compare countries. You cannot simply compare a Balassa index for an industry in one country with the same figure for another country. That is because those countries and distributions can be very different. That work has received a lot of attention.

Of course, there have also been all kinds of developments in trade literature about the importance of the production process being divided into increasingly smaller steps. The question then is: where is the added value? In the past, you had a factory where raw steel went in on one side and the Ford Model T came out on the other. But now that entire production process has been broken down into parts to such an extent that countries can focus on much smaller aspects of the production process. That means you have to interact with each other a lot, transport a lot, transport parts. 

You want to source your parts from somewhere else, but it can't be too far away, because then you have to coordinate that too. So that clustering naturally leads to clustering in the neighbourhood. Think of Germany and the Czech Republic in Europe, the United States and Mexico in America, or Taiwan or South Korea and China in Asia. There is a proximity component to it. These kinds of developments also have an impact on the measurement of comparative advantages.

Another topic I have researched extensively is economic growth and development in general. We have also written a book about this. So yes, it is an important aspect of what I enjoy doing: writing books. They also receive attention. We have been fortunate to have very good publishers, mainly Cambridge and Oxford University Press.

Our book for Cambridge University Press on development aid, or international transfers as it is known, was very well received and has since been reprinted several times. This gave us the opportunity to later write a book on economic geography. I have also written books on international economics, development economics and the combination of international business and economics. And now there is “Trade as a weapon”, in which our general academic work is explained to a wider audience.

You want to continue with this in the near future?

Yes. We are also working on a number of articles, which we will definitely finish. I don't know if we will do any new ones; that always remains to be seen. We have been asked to consider putting together a series for Cambridge University Press on urban and geographical economics. It's a series of short books, about a hundred pages each, focusing on a specific topic, for which we will be the editors. I think we will also contribute to that series, or to other series. 

You keep talking about “we”. Do you like working in a team?

Almost all articles and books are written by several people. We were just talking about “comparative advantages”... everyone has different strengths, and working with others is also just nice, because you can explain your ideas to each other and the other person can then criticize them.

Speaking of collaboration, what can you tell us about your work for U.S.E.? Until recently, you were also head of department at the department.

You mention my role as head of department, but I feel like I have been research director for much longer. When I was recruited by U.S.E., I was research director at Erasmus University, at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, and they were also looking for a research director here.

That is a job that is in line with what I myself find important and interesting. I enjoyed doing that and tried to develop the research step by step, in all kinds of ways. To do that, you need to recruit the right staff, for example.

I ultimately continued in that role as head of department. In that role, you naturally have much broader general responsibilities for staff and welfare. All kinds of policy aspects come into play, for example in relation to decisions made by the House of Representatives and the ministry, and in consultation with other universities. Never a dull moment, so to speak. On the one hand, it's nice to ensure that the department always runs smoothly. Fortunately, a lot of the work is done by other people. But what I like most about that period, is that you can regularly help people take a step further; you can make a difference to specific individuals in their careers. That's nice.

But of course, you do have a lot of meetings. The advantage of being head of department is that you are usually the chair. Fortunately, that implies that you are responsible for ensuring that the meeting starts and ends on time. But then again, meetings in general... some people may enjoy them, but I'm not one of them. 

You can also see a continuing upward trend in the quality of the research we do and the people we attract. I would like to add that an important reason we are able to do this is because we are attractive to foreign students and staff members, particularly because we also teach in English at bachelor's and master's level. This is not an issue for the Master's programmes, but it is for the Bachelor's programme. So, I am concerned about that. How long will we remain attractive to highly qualified foreign staff? That is the challenge for the new head of department.

Speaking of education, will you miss teaching?

I will continue teaching a little bit this month. In February, I will teach “Economics of Global Challenges” together with Paul Schoepfer. If, for whatever reason, I am asked to teach again and I have the time, I will be available. But I don't know how long the demand for teaching will remain.

How do you see the future development of the research and the department?

The school was established in 2003, and in that short time we have built up a very strong department within the world, within the Netherlands. We are doing very well and I am pleased that we are continuing to grow, becoming even better and stronger. If you look at the Shanghai Ranking, U.S.E. has been ranked between 76 and 100 in the world for quite some time now. That is on a par with Munich, Groningen, King's College, John Hopkins, London Business School and higher than seven other universities in the Netherlands. We are doing very well indeed, I would say.

Have you gained any fundamental insights into economics during all those years of research?

When it comes to the international economy, we have been seeing increasing globalisation for a long time now, and the ever-further fragmentation of production processes, as we discussed earlier. Now we are seeing what is known as “slowbalisation”. For years, trade grew faster than income, but that is no longer the case.

Fragmentation also has the disadvantage that if you do it too specifically and too selectively, you become too dependent on a particular supplier or a particular country. That makes you vulnerable. There is clearly more awareness of this now than there was fifteen years ago. Companies are more concerned with it, countries are more concerned with it. It is important that you are not solely dependent on China, for example, or on a single producer for certain components.

Just think of the chip industry, which depends on a single supplier for the production of its machines, and that supplier is based in the Netherlands: ASML. There is no other company in the world that can make those machines.

Of course, we do work with many other companies that make this possible. Without all those suppliers, ASML would not be able to manufacture its products either. But for the world as a whole, this means that they are dependent on one specific company for the supply of those machines.

What do you think other economists should be focusing on in the coming years?

People should not tell you what to study. You should do what you enjoy and find interesting. This usually happens in interaction, which is the beauty of a university. So, I don't have any grand visions of what needs to happen. In my own field, I can see ahead a little for the next two or three years. You can't look much further than that, nor is there any need to do so. U.S.E. is in a very strong position at the moment and I am confident that this will continue. I would like to see the freedom and focus on quality remain.

A lot is asked of you in terms of education, research, fundraising, and so on. And you have to do everything well; sometimes that can be a bit too much. Building a good team is therefore  very important.

Can you let go with peace of mind?

Absolutely. To be honest, I think Niels Bosma is a better head of department than I am. Because he has an eye for it and is naturally more inclined to do it. I think he is more inspiring to other people than I  am, perhaps. But of course, others will have to be the judge of that. In any case, I have every confidence that the new management will guide the department in the right direction.

Text: Gert den Toom