GERRIT GORTER
The present study of economics did not, of course, come out of thin air. Although thinkers in classical Greece already reflected on what we now call economics, it was largely in the eighteenth century that systematic thought on the subject began.
Two conceptual tools—the economic cycle and the idea of the invisible hand—date from that century and are still in use today, both in academic research and in education.
This site contains twenty-five portraits of important economists. Each offers a biographical sketch together with an indication of his (and, in one case, her) significance for the development of economic thought. They claim no more than to provide a first introduction to the lives and works of these pioneers.
These articles originally appeared in Dutch in the Tijdschrift voor het Economisch Onderwijs and were later published on the website of Gerrit Gorter. The English translations are by Folkert Gorter.
Index
François Quesnay
Adam Smith
Thomas Robert Malthus
Jean-Baptiste Say
David Ricardo
Antoine Augustin Cournot
John Stuart Mill
Karl Marx
Walras
Carl Menger
Alfred Marshall
Vilfredo Pareto Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Knut Wicksell
Max Weber
Irving Fisher
Sam de Wolff
John Maynard Keynes
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
Joan Robinson
Jan Tinbergen
John Hicks
John Kenneth Galbraith
Milton Friedman
Paul Samuelson
Jan Tinbergen
The Netherlands 1903–1994
Jan Tinbergen was born in The Hague in the year 1903. He was not the only one in the Tinbergen family with intellectual gifts: two of his brothers also became professors. One of them, Niko, was even awarded the Nobel Prize for his research in ethology. Jan, too, in 1969, would receive the Nobel Prize — together with the Norwegian Ragnar Frisch — for his work in econometrics.
Tinbergen initially studied physics in Leiden. Although he must have had inspiring company there — he met luminaries such as Albert Einstein and Paul Ehrenfest on several occasions — his interests gradually shifted, first toward mathematics and statistics, and later toward economics. This shift in focus is generally attributed to the strong sense of social engagement that Tinbergen demonstrated throughout his life. He was active in the SDAP and later the Labour Party (PvdA), and rather than serving in the military, he fulfilled his alternative service in the Rotterdam prison system.
Many Dutch economists see Tinbergen as their founding father. In Telgen van Tinbergen (1996), Harry van Dalen and Arjo Klamer present the results of a small survey among Dutch economists, showing that Tinbergen towers over his Dutch colleagues in popularity. He even outranks his international peers. Respected economists like Keynes, Schumpeter, and Galbraith — and yes, even founding father Adam Smith — are left behind. World-famous in the Netherlands, in other words.
In the 1930s, while Tinbergen was working at the Central Bureau of Statistics, his main focus was the cause of — and remedy for — the Great Depression. He worked alongside figures such as engineer Hein Vos on the Plan van de Arbeid (Labour Plan) — a kind of Dutch New Deal, proposed as an alternative to the austerity policies of the Ruys de Beerenbrouck and Colijn administrations. In 1936, he constructed a macroeconomic model of the Dutch economy — the first of its kind. Though the model contained only 24 equations, it was nonetheless the precursor to the large-scale models used today by forecasting institutes around the world. Later, he also “built” models for the United States and the United Kingdom.
For variety, Tinbergen spent the years 1936 to 1938 working on behalf of the League of Nations, empirically testing a number of existing business cycle theories. In a now-famous correspondence with Keynes, it became clear that the latter had little confidence in the mathematical-statistical method Tinbergen employed. Keynes tended to place great emphasis on the uncertain expectations of investors — and expectations, after all, do not easily lend themselves to mathematical formulation. Given the development of economic science after the Second World War, one could say that Tinbergen carried the day.
After the Second World War, Tinbergen became the first director of the Central Planning Bureau — a position he held until 1955. After that, he became professor of development planning in Rotterdam. The main issues for him in the immediate postwar period were the reconstruction of the Netherlands and the effectiveness of economic policy. Among other things, he developed the principle that with n policy instruments, one cannot always achieve n + 1 objectives. With interest rates as your only tool, for instance, you could stimulate the economy — but a necessary rate cut might also exert downward pressure on the exchange rate, and that might not be what you intended.
Later, Tinbergen turned his attention to the theory of income distribution. He became well known for his theory on the causes of income leveling. Tinbergen explained the narrowing of income disparities as the result of a kind of race between education and technological development. Education increases the supply of highly skilled workers, while technological progress raises the demand for them. Since education won the race, the result was a relative decrease in the income of the highly educated.
Tinbergen was described by fellow economist Jan Pen as a tragic figure, because the world looked so completely different from his ideals. In Vrij Nederland, Pen wrote in 1994: “He was confronted daily with facts that displeased him and at times made him deeply sad — people continue to slaughter one another, they follow the wrong leaders, the generals go on with their dreadful work — yet he always tried to see the positive in the course of events. (…) In general, he displayed a curious mix of despair and dogged perseverance. And that only got worse in his final years. Tinbergen was without doubt a tragic man.”
Tinbergen remained scientifically active well into old age. He died in 1994 in his hometown of The Hague.