J. Paul Elhorst is Professor of Regional Economics, endowed by the Stichting Leerstoel Regionale Economie (Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe), at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Previously he was Assistant/Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen, and also Economist at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI) in The Hague. He has degrees in Economics (PhD, University of Amsterdam) and Econometrics (MSc, University of Amsterdam). He was awarded the Martin Beckmann Prize for the best paper in Papers in Regional Science 2007 (Jury: Masahija Fujita, Jean Paelinck, John Quigley, Jouke van Dijk). He is Educational Coordinator of the Bachelor and Master Economics at the University of Groningen and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Regional Science, Geographical Analysis, Papers in Regional Science, the International Econometric Review and Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences. He has been research proposal evaluator and pre-advisor of the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO). He also evaluated research proposals for foreign National Science Foundations (Israel, UK, USA). He is member of the Regional Science Association International and the Spatial Econometrics Association. He is also Fellow of the Groningen Research School (SOM) and Fellow of the Netherlands Network of Economics (NAKE). He has taught Spatial Econometrics courses in Groningen (annually), Jönköping (Sweden), Utrecht (the Netherlands) and at the 19^th Advanced Summer School in Regional Science 2006. He has written more than 75 papers in refereed journals, both in English and Dutch. He has supervised 6 PhD theses.