Pieter Jan Kerstens

Researcher

Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO)

Biography

I am a researcher in the Data & Analytics Competence center at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO) in Belgium since September 2021.

Previously, I worked a the Federal Planning Bureau in Belgium where I was part of the IT team and a researcher in demographic projections. I also briefly worked as a data science consultant.

I was a postdoctoral researcher between 2017 and 2019 at the department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO) at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) where I worked on the Tech4Effect project. In particular I worked on developing an interactive efficiency portal for forestry operations using machine level data that enables the various decision makers (e.g. harvest operators, SMEs) to get insights into their performance and, whenever necessary, helps them to improve.

I obtained a PhD in Economics on 19/09/2017 under supervision of prof.dr. Laurens Cherchye (KU Leuven) and prof.dr. Bram De Rock (ULB & KU Leuven). My main research interest is production economics.

In my spare time I enjoy reading, travelling and programming.

Interests

Production economics
Productivity
Data envelopment analysis
Microeconomics
Nonparametric methods
Behavioral economics
Machine learning

Education

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2019

Københavns Universitet (Denmark)
PhD in Economics, 2017

KU Leuven (Belgium)
MSc in Advanced Studies in Economics, 2013

KU Leuven (Belgium)
MSc in Mathematical Engineering, 2012

KU Leuven (Belgium)
BSc in Computer Science, 2010

Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium)

Recent Publications

More Publications

Peter Bogetoft, Pieter Jan Kerstens (2024). Distinguishing useful and wasteful slack. Operations Research.

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Laurens Cherchye, Bram De Rock, Bart Dierynck, Pieter Jan Kerstens, Filip Roodhooft (2023). A DEA-based approach to customer value analysis. European Journal of Operational Research.

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Frederic Ang, Pieter Jan Kerstens (2023). Robust nonparametric analysis of dynamic profits, prices and productivity: An application to French meat-processing firms. European Review of Agricultural Economics.

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Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo, Pieter Jan Kerstens, Helmer Belbo, Peter Bogetoft, Bruce Talbot, Niels Strange (2021). Efficiency drivers in harvesting operations in mixed Boreal stands: a Norwegian case study. International Journal of Forest Engineering.

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Frederic Ang, Pieter Jan Kerstens (2020). A superlative indicator for the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indicator: Theory and application. European Journal of Operational Research.

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Matthias Staessens, Pieter Jan Kerstens, Johan Bruneel, Laurens Cherchye (2019). Data Envelopment Analysis and Social Enterprises: Analysing Performance, Strategic Orientation and Mission Drift. Journal of Business Ethics.

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Laurens Cherchye, Sam Cosaert, Bram De Rock, Pieter Jan Kerstens, Frederic Vermeulen (2018). Individual welfare analysis for collective households. Journal of Public Economics.

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Laurens Cherchye, Bram De Rock, Pieter Jan Kerstens (2018). Production with storable and durable inputs: nonparametric analysis of intertemporal efficiency. European Journal of Operational Research.

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Frederic Ang, Pieter Jan Kerstens (2017). Decomposing the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen Total Factor Productivity Indicator: an application to U.S. agriculture. European Journal of Operational Research.

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Pieter Jan Kerstens (2017). Beyond black box modeling in production: methodological advances in nonparametric methods. PhD thesis.

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Work in progress

Working papers:

“Classification of Geological Borehole Descriptions Using a Domain Adapted Large Language Model” (with Hossein Ghorbanfekr, Katrijn Dirix), revision requested by Applied Computing and Geosciences

Work in progress:

“Visualizing mix similarity and scale: identification of group technologies and tracking of frontier firms” (with Mette Asmild)

Projects

Deautils

This repository will host various utilities that one may need when doing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA).

matlabutils

I keep a repository with useful MATLAB utility functions that intend to make MATLAB programming just that more easy.

nepa

Nonparametric Efficiency and Productivity Analysis for Julia. A toolbox for doing efficiency analysis and computing productivity change using nonparametric techniques.

nprlab

NonParametric Regression Laboratory for MATLAB (NPRLab) is a MATLAB toolbox for nonparametric regression. In particular, it implements a variety of linear estimators. Data rescaling and bandwidth tuning is done automatically by the software. Finally, the toolbox also features confidence interval estimation by the volume-of-tube formula both in a one-dimensional and multi-dimensional setting.

Teaching

Guest lecturer in the master courses “Contracts and cooperatives” and “Economic efficiency and benchmarking” at the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen during the academic years 2017-2018 and 2018-2019.
Daily advisor for 3 individual master thesis students and 1 group of 5 master thesis students at the Department of Economics at KU Leuven.
Teaching assistant for the module Seminarie methoden voor economische analyse in the 2nd semester at the Department of Economics at KU Leuven during the academic year 2016-2017.

Contact

pieterjan dot kerstens at vito dot be
Boeretang 200, 2400 Mol, Belgium