It all started with the foundation of Netherlands School of Commerce in 1913 through a private initiative with broad support from the Rotterdam business community. 

By 1939, the need for higher education in commerce and economics as an academic discipline resulted into the Netherlands School of Economics, the predecessor of Erasmus University Rotterdam

The university gained worldwide fame with its education and research in the fields of (business-) economics and econometrics and with its renowned professors, such as Johannes Witteveen, who became the first Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Henri Theil, and Jan Tinbergen, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1969. 

The school’s Econometric Institute is internationally recognised for its groundbreaking work and has Jan Tinbergen, one of the pioneers of econometrics as a discipline, as one of its founders.