Luc Soete (Brussels, 1950) is a Belgian economist, Rector Magnificus Professor of International Economic Relations at the School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University and director of UNU-MERIT, a joint research institute of the United Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht University. Luc Soete is also member of the Dutch scientific advisory body Adviesraad voor Wetenschap en Technologie (AWT).
Luc Soete studied general economic sciences and development economy at the University of Gent and started his career as researcher at the Economy Department of the University of Antwerp. In 1978 he obtained his PhD in Economy at the University of Sussex. He has closely worked and co-authored several publications with his mentor Christopher Freeman.
He worked for the Institute of Development Studies and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), both of the University of Sussex, and at the Economy Department of Stanford University. In 1986 he became professor at the Rijksuniversiteit Limburg (now Maastricht University), in Maastricht the Netherlands, where in 1988 he founded the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT). In 2006 MERIT merged with the UNU Institute for New Technologies (UNU-INTECH, which had been founded in 1990.
As of September 2012, he will become the Rector Magnificus of Maastricht University.