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On April 12, 2003 it was hundred years ago that Jan Tinbergen was born. In 1969 he received, together with Ragnar Frisch, the first Nobel Prize in Economics 'for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes'. In this issue of De Economist, which commemorates Tinbergen's 100th anniversary, three other Nobel laureates, viz. Paul Samuelson, Lawrence Klein and Robert Solow, give their views on this and other contributions by Tinbergen to economic science. In addition this issue contains six articles giving present-day views on topics which were high on Tinbergen's research agenda, as well as an overview of articles Tinbergen wrote for De Economist.
Jan Tinbergen started his academic career as a theoretical physicist. But, still as a student in Leiden, appalled by the conditions of poverty in which the local population lived and wishing to contribute to the combat against such social evils, he decided to become an economist after having obtained his doctorate in mathematics and physics. This decision was characteristic of Tinbergen and his attitude towards science. The hundreds of articles he wrote and the path breaking contributions he made to economic science were always inspired by the social problems he observed. For example, during the great depression of the 1930s, he worked on the modelling of business cycles and, together with others, laid the foundation for econometrics. Other examples are his pioneering work in economic policy analysis and development planning. In other words, his approach to economics always had a purpose and his contributions to economics related directly to his ideals. The brief survey of Tinbergen's professional life presented below gives further testimony of this attitude.
During his long life Tinbergen influenced and inspired many people. To his students he was the famous man who nevertheless approached them as equals and who, in class, offered remarkably lucid insights. His colleagues were often taken by surprise when he pointed at promising areas of research or new applications they had been overlooking already for some time. And others admired him for his compassion with the poor, his unrelenting commitment to a better world and his active participation in social movements.
It is only appropriate that De Economist devote a commemorative issue on the occasion of Tinbergen's 100th anniversary, having...