Florian Heine is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethics, Governance and Society at the School of Business and Economics of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is also affiliated with the Tinbergen Institute. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Maastricht University in 2017. Before joining VU Amsterdam in 2022, he was Assistant Professor at Tilburg University. Florian’s research and teaching lie at the intersection of behavioural economics, experimental economics, ethics, and public governance. His work examines how people make decisions in situations involving cooperation, competition, moral judgement, and institutional constraints. By combining experimental methods with insights from psychology, law, and public administration, he studies socially relevant questions about behaviour in markets, organisations, and public policy.
dr. Florian Heine
Florian Heine studies how people behave when they have to cooperate, compete, or make morally difficult decisions. His research addresses questions that matter for business, government, and society, such as when people trust others, when they punish unfair behaviour, how leaders shape conflict and cooperation, and how institutions influence decision-making.
Using laboratory and survey experiments, he examines behaviour in markets, organisations, teams, and public policy settings. A central theme in his work is that decision-making is shaped not only by incentives, but also by social identity, moral values, perceptions of fairness, and institutional design.
His research connects behavioural and experimental economics with ethics, public management, and law and economics. Current topics include competition and cooperation in groups, leadership and communication, trust and reciprocity, moral foundations and economic behaviour, and how individuals evaluate proportionality, responsibility, and legitimacy in decisions by governments and firms.
Industry / societal domains: public sector, regulation, governance, business ethics, markets and organisations.
Application domains: behavioural public policy, institutional design, competition and cooperation, ethical decision-making, experimental methods.
Florian Heine teaches at bachelor’s, master’s, and executive level in the areas of ethics, behavioural economics, public policy, and experimental methods. His teaching focuses on helping students connect theory to real-world societal and organisational challenges, with particular attention to moral dilemmas, strategic interaction, and decision-making under uncertainty.
He has experience coordinating education and contributing to curriculum development. In previous roles, he served as Academic Director of the MSc Public Governance at Tilburg University, where he helped shape programme development and accreditation processes. He also teaches methodology-related courses and executive education, and is committed to interactive teaching formats that encourage critical thinking and active student participation.
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