Jacques-François Thisse is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He has published over 150 articles in different international journals (Econometrica, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, Operations Research, etc) and in different disciplines such as industrial economics, spatial economics, international economics and management science. He is the co-author of Discrete Choice Theory of Product differentiation and of Economics of Agglomeration. He is particularly interested in product differentiation, heterogeneous consumers and firms in various types of market structure and spatial settings, as well as in the spatial organization of economic activities. He has been a Visiting Invited Professor in many departments, most recently at Columbia economics department and has received many prestigious awards, amongst which the Solvay price of the Belgian Science foundation in 2006