Jan Tinbergen (/ˈtɪnbɜːrɡən/ TIN-bur-gən, Dutch: [jɑn ˈtɪmbɛrɣə(n)]; 12 April 1903 – 9 June 1994) was a Dutch economist who was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of econometrics.
Jan Tinbergen | |
|---|---|
 Tinbergen in 1982 | |
| Born | 12 April 1903 The Hague, Netherlands |
| Died | 9 June 1994 (aged 91) The Hague, Netherlands |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | Leiden University |
| Known for | First national macroeconomic model |
| Awards | Erasmus Prize (1967) Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1969) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Economics, econometrics |
| Institutions | Erasmus University |
| Doctoral advisor | Paul Ehrenfest |
| Doctoral students | Tjalling Koopmans Hans van den Doel Supachai Panitchpakdi Ashok Mitra |
His important contributions to econometrics include the development of the first macroeconometric models, the solution of the identification problem, and the understanding of dynamic models. Tinbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 1945, he founded the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) and was the agency's first director.
Biography
Tinbergen was the eldest of five children of Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen and Jeannette van Eek. His brother Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen would also win a Nobel Prize (for physiology, during 1973) for his work in ethology, while his youngest brother Luuk would become a famous ornithologist. Jan and Nikolaas Tinbergen are the only siblings to have both won Nobel Prizes.
Between 1921 and 1925, Tinbergen studied mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest. During those years at Leiden, he had numerous discussions with Ehrenfest, Kamerlingh Onnes, Hendrik Lorentz, Pieter Zeeman, and Albert Einstein.
After graduating, Tinbergen fulfilled his community service in the administration of a prison in Rotterdam and at the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in The Hague. He then returned to the University of Leiden and in 1929 defended his PhD thesis titled "Minimumproblemen in de natuurkunde en de economie" (Minimisation problems in Physics and Economics). This topic was suggested by Ehrenfest and allowed Tinbergen to combine his interests in mathematics, physics, economics and politics. At that time, CBS established a new department of business surveys and mathematical statistics, and Tinbergen became its first chairman, working at CBS until 1945. Access to the vast CBS data helped Tinbergen in testing his theoretical models. In parallel, starting from 1931, he was professor of statistics at the University of Amsterdam, and in 1933 he was appointed associate professor of mathematics and statistics at The Netherlands School of Economics, Rotterdam, where he stayed until 1973.
From 1929 to 1945 he worked for the Dutch statistical office and served as consultant at the Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations (1936–1938). In 1945 he became the first director of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and left this position in 1955 to focus on education. He spent one year as a visiting professor at the Harvard University and then returned to the Dutch Economic Institute (the successor of the Netherlands School of Economics). In parallel, he provided consulting services to international organizations and governments of various developing countries, such as United Arab Republic, Turkey, Venezuela, Surinam, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Tinbergen became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946. He was also a member of the International Academy of Science, Munich. In 1956 he founded the Econometric Institute at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam together with Henri Theil, who also was his successor in Rotterdam. In 1960, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Tinbergen Institute was named in his honour. The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) awarded its Honorary Fellowship to Jan Tinbergen in 1962. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1963. In 1968, he received an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1974.
Work
For many, Jan Tinbergen became known for the so-called 'Tinbergen Norm' often discussed long after his death. There is no written work of Tinbergen in which he himself states it formally. It is generally believed to be the principle that, if the ratio between the greatest and least income exceeds 5, it becomes disadvantageous for the societal unit involved. Tinbergen himself discussed some technicalities of a five-to-one income distribution ratio in an article published in 1981. Apart from specifics about a five-to-one ratio, it is true in general that Tinbergen's grand theme was income distribution and the search for an optimal social order.
Tinbergen developed the first national comprehensive macroeconomic model, which he first developed in 1936 for the Netherlands, and later applied to the United States and the United Kingdom.
In his work on macroeconomic modelling and economic policy making, Tinbergen classified some economic quantities as targets and others as instruments. Targets are those macroeconomic variables the policy maker wishes to influence, whereas instruments are the variables that the policy maker can control directly. Tinbergen emphasized that achieving the desired values of a certain number of targets requires the policy maker to control an equal number of instruments. This is known as the .
Tinbergen's classification remains influential today, underlying the theory of monetary policy used by central banks. Many central banks today regard the inflation rate as their target; the policy instrument they use to control inflation is the short-term interest rate.
Tinbergen's work on macroeconomic models was later continued by Lawrence Klein, contributing to another Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. For his cultural contributions, he was given the Gouden Ganzenveer in 1985.
Tinbergen's econometric modelling lead to a lively debate with several known participants including J.M. Keynes, Ragnar Frisch and Milton Friedman. The debate is sometime referred to as the . (see Keynes–Tinbergen debate.)
Selected publications
- World security and equity. Aldershot, 1990. ISBN 1-85278-187-4.
- Production, income and welfare: the search for an optimal social order. Brighton, 1985 ISBN 0-7450-0014-2.
- Economic policy: Principles and Design. Amsterdam, 1978. ISBN 0-7204-3129-8.
- Der Dialog Nord-Süd: Informationen zur Entwicklungspolitik. Frankfurt am Main: Europ. Verlagsanstalt, 1977.
- Income distribution: analysis and policies. New York, 1975. ISBN 0-444-10832-7.
- The Dynamics of Business Cycles: A Study in Economic Fluctuations. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974. ISBN 0-226-80418-6.
- The Element of Space in Development Planning (together with L.B.M. Mennes and J.G. Waardenburg), Amsterdam, 1969
- Development planning. London, 1967.
- Central planning. Studies in comparative economics, 4. New Haven, 1964.
- Shaping the world economy, suggestions for an international economic policy. New York, 1962.
- Selected papers. Amsterdam, 1959
- Economic Policy: Principles and Design, Amsterdam, 1956
- Centralization and Decentralization in Economic Policy, Amsterdam, 1954 ISBN 0-313-23077-3.
- Econometrics. London, 1953.
- On the Theory of Economic Policy. Second edition (1952) is Volume 1 of Contributions to Economic Analysis, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
- Business Cycles in the United Kingdom, 1870–1914, Amsterdam, 1951
- International economic co-operation. Amsterdam, 1945.
- Business Cycles in the United States, 1919–1932, Geneva, 1939 and New York, 1968.
- An econometric approach to business cycle problems. In: Impasses économiques; 2; Actualités scientifiques et industrielles, ISSN 0365-6861; 525. Paris, 1937.
- About Tinbergen
- Acocella, Nicola, Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni (2006), ‘Tinbergen and Theil meet Nash: controllability in policy games’, in: ‘Economics Letters’, 90(2): 213–218.
- Acocella, Nicola, Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni and Hughes Hallett, A. [2010], ‘Policy games, policy neutrality and Tinbergen controllability under rational expectations’, in: ‘Journal of Macroeconomics’, 32(1): 55–67.
- Acocella, Nicola Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni and Hughes Hallett, A. [2011], ‘Tinbergen controllability and n-player LQ-games’, in: ‘Economics Letters’, 113: 32–4.
- Murshed, SM. 2021. "Reformulating Jan Tinbergen’s normative vision on welfare and security." Journal of Peace Research.
See also
- List of economists
References
- Dekker, Erwin (2021). Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-85320-0.
- Dekker, Erwin (2022). "An "Ordo-Thinker" on the Left: Jan Tinbergen on the National and International Economic Order". History of Political Economy. 54 (4): 689–718. doi:10.1215/00182702-9895888. ISSN 0018-2702. S2CID 248839847.
- Magnus, Jan & Mary S. Morgan (1987) The ET Interview: Professor J. Tinbergen in: 'Econometric Theory 3, 1987, 117-142.
- Willlekens, Frans (2008) International Migration in Europe: Data, Models and Estimates. New Jersey. John Wiley & Sons: 117.
- "Nobel Prize Facts".
- Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) Koninklijke Bibliotheek (in Dutch)
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Jan Tinbergen", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
- Jan Tinbergen (1929). "Minimumproblemen in de natuurkunde en de economie" (PDF).
- Curriculum Vitae. nobelprize.org
- "Jan Tinbergen (1903 - 1994)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 18 September 2020.
- View/Search Fellows of the ASA Archived 2016-06-16 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 2016-07-23.
- "Jan Tinbergen". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
- "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
- "Honorary Degree Citation - Jan Tinbergen* | Concordia University Archives". archives.concordia.ca. Retrieved 2016-03-30.
- "J. Tinbergen". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
- Akkerboom, Broer. "De Tinbergennorm bestaat niet". Me Judice, 14 Mei 2015.
- Tinbergen, Jan (1981). "Misunderstandings concerning income distribution policies" (PDF). De Economist. 129 (1): 13. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1030.5758. doi:10.1007/BF01705865. S2CID 154797347.
- Dhaene, G.; Barten, A. P. (1989). "When it all began". Economic Modelling. 6 (2): 203. doi:10.1016/0264-9993(89)90005-9.
- Klein, Lawrence (2004). "The Contribution of Jan Tinbergen to Economic Science". De Economist. 152 (2): 155–157. doi:10.1023/B:ECOT.0000023251.14849.4f. S2CID 154689887.
- Del Rio, Pablo; Howlett, Michael P. (2013). "Beyond the'Tinbergen Rule'in Policy Design: Matching Tools and Goals in Policy Portfolios". Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Research Paper (13–01). Retrieved 21 December 2020.
- Blinder, Alan (1999), Central Banking in Theory and Practice. MIT Press, ISBN 0262522608.
- "Laureaten De Gouden Ganzenveer vanaf 1955". Stichting De Gouden Ganzenveer. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-02-25. Retrieved 2009-07-28.
- Leeson, R. (1998). "The Ghosts I Called I Can't Get Rid of Now: the Keynes-Tinbergen-Friedman-Phillips Critique of Keynesian Macroeconometrics" (PDF). History of Political Economy. 30 (1): 51–94. doi:10.1215/00182702-30-1-51.
- Louçã, F. (1999). "The econometric challenge to Keynes: Arguments and contradictions in the early debates about a late issue" (PDF). The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought. 6 (3): 404–438. doi:10.1080/10427719900000074. hdl:10400.5/25984.[permanent dead link]
- Peden, W. (2022). "Probability and Statistics in the Tinbergen-Keynes Debates". Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. 15 (2): 100–119. doi:10.23941/ejpe.v15i2.710.
External links
- Jan Tinbergen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- TINBERGEN, Jan in: Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging in Nederland
- Jan Tinbergen College Archived 2023-11-23 at the Wayback Machine (Dutch website)
- IDEAS/RePEc
- Profile at The International Institute of Social Studies Archived 2015-09-22 at the Wayback Machine (ISS)
- "Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994)". The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.). Liberty Fund. 2008.
- Newspaper clippings about Jan Tinbergen in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
- Jan Tinbergen on Nobelprize.org
Jan Tinbergen ˈ t ɪ n b ɜːr ɡ en TIN bur gen Dutch jɑn ˈtɪmbɛrɣe n 12 April 1903 9 June 1994 was a Dutch economist who was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969 which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes He is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of econometrics Jan TinbergenTinbergen in 1982Born 1903 04 12 12 April 1903 The Hague NetherlandsDied9 June 1994 1994 06 09 aged 91 The Hague NetherlandsNationalityDutchAlma materLeiden UniversityKnown forFirst national macroeconomic modelAwardsErasmus Prize 1967 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 1969 Scientific careerFieldsEconomics econometricsInstitutionsErasmus UniversityDoctoral advisorPaul EhrenfestDoctoral studentsTjalling Koopmans Hans van den Doel Supachai Panitchpakdi Ashok Mitra His important contributions to econometrics include the development of the first macroeconometric models the solution of the identification problem and the understanding of dynamic models Tinbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and Security In 1945 he founded the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis CPB and was the agency s first director BiographyTinbergen was the eldest of five children of Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen and Jeannette van Eek His brother Nikolaas Niko Tinbergen would also win a Nobel Prize for physiology during 1973 for his work in ethology while his youngest brother Luuk would become a famous ornithologist Jan and Nikolaas Tinbergen are the only siblings to have both won Nobel Prizes Between 1921 and 1925 Tinbergen studied mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest During those years at Leiden he had numerous discussions with Ehrenfest Kamerlingh Onnes Hendrik Lorentz Pieter Zeeman and Albert Einstein After graduating Tinbergen fulfilled his community service in the administration of a prison in Rotterdam and at the Central Bureau of Statistics CBS in The Hague He then returned to the University of Leiden and in 1929 defended his PhD thesis titled Minimumproblemen in de natuurkunde en de economie Minimisation problems in Physics and Economics This topic was suggested by Ehrenfest and allowed Tinbergen to combine his interests in mathematics physics economics and politics At that time CBS established a new department of business surveys and mathematical statistics and Tinbergen became its first chairman working at CBS until 1945 Access to the vast CBS data helped Tinbergen in testing his theoretical models In parallel starting from 1931 he was professor of statistics at the University of Amsterdam and in 1933 he was appointed associate professor of mathematics and statistics at The Netherlands School of Economics Rotterdam where he stayed until 1973 From 1929 to 1945 he worked for the Dutch statistical office and served as consultant at the Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations 1936 1938 In 1945 he became the first director of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and left this position in 1955 to focus on education He spent one year as a visiting professor at the Harvard University and then returned to the Dutch Economic Institute the successor of the Netherlands School of Economics In parallel he provided consulting services to international organizations and governments of various developing countries such as United Arab Republic Turkey Venezuela Surinam Indonesia and Pakistan Tinbergen became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1946 He was also a member of the International Academy of Science Munich In 1956 he founded the Econometric Institute at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam together with Henri Theil who also was his successor in Rotterdam In 1960 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences The Tinbergen Institute was named in his honour The International Institute of Social Studies ISS awarded its Honorary Fellowship to Jan Tinbergen in 1962 He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1963 In 1968 he received an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University which later became Concordia University He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1974 WorkMinister Pronk Tinbergen and De Seynes at an economy symposium in The Hague 23 May 1975 For many Jan Tinbergen became known for the so called Tinbergen Norm often discussed long after his death There is no written work of Tinbergen in which he himself states it formally It is generally believed to be the principle that if the ratio between the greatest and least income exceeds 5 it becomes disadvantageous for the societal unit involved Tinbergen himself discussed some technicalities of a five to one income distribution ratio in an article published in 1981 Apart from specifics about a five to one ratio it is true in general that Tinbergen s grand theme was income distribution and the search for an optimal social order Tinbergen developed the first national comprehensive macroeconomic model which he first developed in 1936 for the Netherlands and later applied to the United States and the United Kingdom In his work on macroeconomic modelling and economic policy making Tinbergen classified some economic quantities as targets and others as instruments Targets are those macroeconomic variables the policy maker wishes to influence whereas instruments are the variables that the policy maker can control directly Tinbergen emphasized that achieving the desired values of a certain number of targets requires the policy maker to control an equal number of instruments This is known as the Tinbergen s classification remains influential today underlying the theory of monetary policy used by central banks Many central banks today regard the inflation rate as their target the policy instrument they use to control inflation is the short term interest rate Tinbergen s work on macroeconomic models was later continued by Lawrence Klein contributing to another Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences For his cultural contributions he was given the Gouden Ganzenveer in 1985 Tinbergen s econometric modelling lead to a lively debate with several known participants including J M Keynes Ragnar Frisch and Milton Friedman The debate is sometime referred to as the see Keynes Tinbergen debate Selected publicationsWorld security and equity Aldershot 1990 ISBN 1 85278 187 4 Production income and welfare the search for an optimal social order Brighton 1985 ISBN 0 7450 0014 2 Economic policy Principles and Design Amsterdam 1978 ISBN 0 7204 3129 8 Der Dialog Nord Sud Informationen zur Entwicklungspolitik Frankfurt am Main Europ Verlagsanstalt 1977 Income distribution analysis and policies New York 1975 ISBN 0 444 10832 7 The Dynamics of Business Cycles A Study in Economic Fluctuations Chicago U of Chicago P 1974 ISBN 0 226 80418 6 The Element of Space in Development Planning together with L B M Mennes and J G Waardenburg Amsterdam 1969 Development planning London 1967 Central planning Studies in comparative economics 4 New Haven 1964 Shaping the world economy suggestions for an international economic policy New York 1962 Selected papers Amsterdam 1959 Economic Policy Principles and Design Amsterdam 1956 Centralization and Decentralization in Economic Policy Amsterdam 1954 ISBN 0 313 23077 3 Econometrics London 1953 On the Theory of Economic Policy Second edition 1952 is Volume 1 of Contributions to Economic Analysis Amsterdam North Holland Business Cycles in the United Kingdom 1870 1914 Amsterdam 1951 International economic co operation Amsterdam 1945 Business Cycles in the United States 1919 1932 Geneva 1939 and New York 1968 An econometric approach to business cycle problems In Impasses economiques 2 Actualites scientifiques et industrielles ISSN 0365 6861 525 Paris 1937 About TinbergenAcocella Nicola Di Bartolomeo Giovanni 2006 Tinbergen and Theil meet Nash controllability in policy games in Economics Letters 90 2 213 218 Acocella Nicola Di Bartolomeo Giovanni and Hughes Hallett A 2010 Policy games policy neutrality and Tinbergen controllability under rational expectations in Journal of Macroeconomics 32 1 55 67 Acocella Nicola Di Bartolomeo Giovanni and Hughes Hallett A 2011 Tinbergen controllability and n player LQ games in Economics Letters 113 32 4 Murshed SM 2021 Reformulating Jan Tinbergen s normative vision on welfare and security Journal of Peace Research See alsoList of economistsReferencesDekker Erwin 2021 Jan Tinbergen 1903 1994 and the Rise of Economic Expertise Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 108 85320 0 Dekker Erwin 2022 An Ordo Thinker on the Left Jan Tinbergen on the National and International Economic Order History of Political Economy 54 4 689 718 doi 10 1215 00182702 9895888 ISSN 0018 2702 S2CID 248839847 Magnus Jan amp Mary S Morgan 1987 The ET Interview Professor J Tinbergen in Econometric Theory 3 1987 117 142 Willlekens Frans 2008 International Migration in Europe Data Models and Estimates New Jersey John Wiley amp Sons 117 Nobel Prize Facts Jan Tinbergen 1903 1994 Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Dutch O Connor John J Robertson Edmund F Jan Tinbergen MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive University of St Andrews Jan Tinbergen 1929 Minimumproblemen in de natuurkunde en de economie PDF Curriculum Vitae nobelprize org Jan Tinbergen 1903 1994 Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Archived from the original on 18 September 2020 View Search Fellows of the ASA Archived 2016 06 16 at the Wayback Machine accessed 2016 07 23 Jan Tinbergen American Academy of Arts amp Sciences Retrieved 2022 11 10 APS Member History search amphilsoc org Retrieved 2022 11 10 Honorary Degree Citation Jan Tinbergen Concordia University Archives archives concordia ca Retrieved 2016 03 30 J Tinbergen www nasonline org Retrieved 2022 11 10 Akkerboom Broer De Tinbergennorm bestaat niet Me Judice 14 Mei 2015 Tinbergen Jan 1981 Misunderstandings concerning income distribution policies PDF De Economist 129 1 13 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 1030 5758 doi 10 1007 BF01705865 S2CID 154797347 Dhaene G Barten A P 1989 When it all began Economic Modelling 6 2 203 doi 10 1016 0264 9993 89 90005 9 Klein Lawrence 2004 The Contribution of Jan Tinbergen to Economic Science De Economist 152 2 155 157 doi 10 1023 B ECOT 0000023251 14849 4f S2CID 154689887 Del Rio Pablo Howlett Michael P 2013 Beyond the Tinbergen Rule in Policy Design Matching Tools and Goals in Policy Portfolios Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Research Paper 13 01 Retrieved 21 December 2020 Blinder Alan 1999 Central Banking in Theory and Practice MIT Press ISBN 0262522608 Laureaten De Gouden Ganzenveer vanaf 1955 Stichting De Gouden Ganzenveer 2009 Archived from the original on 2009 02 25 Retrieved 2009 07 28 Leeson R 1998 The Ghosts I Called I Can t Get Rid of Now the Keynes Tinbergen Friedman Phillips Critique of Keynesian Macroeconometrics PDF History of Political Economy 30 1 51 94 doi 10 1215 00182702 30 1 51 Louca F 1999 The econometric challenge to Keynes Arguments and contradictions in the early debates about a late issue PDF The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 6 3 404 438 doi 10 1080 10427719900000074 hdl 10400 5 25984 permanent dead link Peden W 2022 Probability and Statistics in the Tinbergen Keynes Debates Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 15 2 100 119 doi 10 23941 ejpe v15i2 710 External linksWikiquote has quotations related to Jan Tinbergen Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jan Tinbergen Jan Tinbergen at the Mathematics Genealogy Project TINBERGEN Jan in Biografisch Woordenboek van het Socialisme en de Arbeidersbeweging in Nederland Jan Tinbergen College Archived 2023 11 23 at the Wayback Machine Dutch website IDEAS RePEc Profile at The International Institute of Social Studies Archived 2015 09 22 at the Wayback Machine ISS Jan Tinbergen 1903 1994 The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics Library of Economics and Liberty 2nd ed Liberty Fund 2008 Newspaper clippings about Jan Tinbergen in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Jan Tinbergen on Nobelprize orgAwardsNew creation Laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics 1969 Served alongside Ragnar Frisch Succeeded byPaul A Samuelson
