Arthur van Soest is a Professor in Econometrics at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, since 1995. He is a scientific director of Netspar, the Dutch Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement. He is also affiliated with RAND, Santa Monica, where he worked as a senior economist from 2003 until 2007. Previously he was Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the same institute. From 1992 until 1997, he had a research fellowship of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has a Ph.D. in Econometrics from Tilburg University, where his advisors were Arie Kapteyn and Peter Kooreman.

His research interests cover microeconometrics (limited dependent variable models, panel data, semi- and nonparametrics), labor economics (participation and labour supply, formal versus informal sector employment, wage structures), consumption and saving behaviour (income expectations, demand systems, portfolio choice), economic psychology (risk aversion, time preferences, anchoring, non-expected-utility models), health economics and development economics. He has published on labour supply, formal and informal sector employment, income expectations, work disability, etc. in various journals, including JEctr, JAE, REStat, EER, JEBO, JASA, LabEc, JHR, JBES, ILRR, and AER.

Arthur van Soest joined IZA as a Research Fellow in July 2000. He stayed at IZA as a Visiting Research Fellow from February until April 2008.