Tinbergen: an influential globalist in Dutch society, also promoting the facilitation of development in poor countries
Professor Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994), who studied both physics and economics, won the first Nobel prize for Economic Sciences in 1969 together with the Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch ‘for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes’. He was at the forefront of a growing interest in international solidarity in the Netherlands in the 1960s. As a leading economist, he was driven by ideals and searching for solutions to real-world problems.
Economics, for him, was not a goal in itself, but rather a way to get to solutions for the improvement of the world. As such, problems he cared about and studied were developmental issues, war economics, and the unequal income distribution. At company level he has been said to have developed the ‘Tinbergen Norm’, arguing that a ratio bigger than 1:5 between the lowest and highest income earners within a company is contra-productive. Although this norm has not been proven to have originated from Tinbergen’s work, the egalitarian and normative aspect of this ‘norm’ is in line with his thinking. Read more here.
By 1945, he already proposed that the (increasing) divide between rich and poor countries was one of the, if not the, most important problems for the world. While unpopular at that point in time, the Netherlands started shifting from colonial to development cooperation policies not soon after (read more here). He stressed international aspects in his thinking and work.
He was an advisor to the League of Nations in Geneva between 1936 and 1938. In 1945, he was the founding director of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (Centraal Plan Bureau, CPB). After a decade in this position, he made his return to academia and contributed vastly to econometrics, national macro-economic modelling and economics of developing countries, among other disciplines. In the 1950s, he was involved in the Square Movement (Pleinbeweging) and in the founding of the Novib.
In the 1960s, Jan Pronk, future minister for Development Cooperation, was Tinbergen’s student and later research assistant. He inspired Pronk with his vision on North-South relations, which posed that the cause of the ‘underdevelopment’ of the South stemmed from unfair economic relations between the Global North and South. Furthermore, Tinbergen was of the opinion that the Dutch needed to supports world after their country had been rebuilt with the help of aid from the Marshall plan after World War II. In this podcast (at approximately 20:57) Pronk credits Tinbergen for influencing him to get into politics.
In 1964, the Directorate-General for Development Cooperation (Directoraat Generaal Internationale Samenwerking, DGIS) within the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) was founded (read more here). In the period 1965-66 the first minister for Aid to Developing Coutnries, Theodorus Hendrikus (Theo) Bot (KVP, later part of CDA) was supported by a new body called ‘the National Advisory Board concerning Assistance to Less-Developed Countries, NAR’ (Nationale Raad van Advies inzake de Hulpverlening aan Minder Ontwikkelde Landen, NAR). This new advisory body was chaired by Jan Tinbergen. Moreover, in 1965 Tinbergen became the first chair of the UN Commission for Development Planning. He was responsible for monitoring progress in the ‘first development decade’ and prepare for the ‘second development decade’. The existence of a ‘second development decade’ was also partly the result of his labour. He advocated, together with minister Berend Jan Udink (CHU, later CDA), who was the minister for aid to developing countries in the period 1967-71, to push for this in the UN. Professor Tinbergen furthermore pushed for the Group of 77 to gain more power within the UN. These several roles and actions in the 1960s and before that indicate the strong influence Tinbergen has had on Dutch development cooperation.
A question that might arise here is: how is this relevant for global citizenship? Tinbergen’s focus on conducting economic research to solve global problems points to this relevance. Moreover, he used to call himself a globalist, for which he has faced criticism. Even from within his own (social-democratic) political party (PvdA) there were critics, as this international orientation was perceived as containing communist sympathies amidst the Cold War. As a leading economist in the West, Tinbergen’s international vision had lasting influence on society and on policymaking in the Netherlands and beyond.
Other trends
In 1968, a new campaign by students focused on cane sugar versus beet sugar emerged in the Netherlands. It commenced a new form of fair-trade activism. The activists operated with the goal of changing the political and economic structure of world trade. They were motivated by the unfair power relations in world trade, which benefited certain countries and peoples over others. By selling cane sugar at a ‘fair price’ they hoped to induce lasting change. Early on they got support from Jan Tinbergen. Read more about the cane sugar actions in the fair-trade timeline.
In the following year, 1969, the first Dutch Fair-Trade Shop (‘Wereldwinkel’) opened, following the cane sugar campaign. On the basis of solidarity with the ‘Third World’, the store sold products from ‘Third World’ countries at fair prices and channeled its profits to the producers of the products. Find out more about the Dutch Fair-Trade Shops here.
Sources:
- Roel Bos & Gelijn Werner, “Normatieve kant van Tinbergen heeft flinke stempel op beleid gedrukt” ESB, 105(4786S), 11 juni 2020.
- Tinbergen, J. (1970). Een leefbare aarde.
- Erwin Dekker, “Jan Tinbergen en de Verenigde Naties”, 2021.
- van Dam, P. (2019). Goodbye to Grand Politics: The Cane Sugar Campaign and the Limits of Transnational Activism, 1968–1974. Contemporary European History, 28(4), 518-534.
- Dekker, E. (2021). Opening up Vistas: India and the World. In Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics, pp. 261-286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108856546.016
Furter Reading:
The first biography of Jan Tinbergen:
- Dekker, E. (2021). Jan Tinbergen: een econoom op zoek naar vrede. Boom.
Updates on publications regarding Tinbergen:
Furter Listening:
A podcast by BNR on Tinbergen and his influence. Specifically, episode 1 (on Tinbergen’s life), 8 (on his normative and ideological thinking), and 10 (on development cooperation) are interesting in this context.
