Papers by Peter Rodenburg
Erwin Dekker, Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise
OEconomia
in Dutch Unemployment Statistics 1900-1940
Please send questions and/or remarks of nonscientific nature to [email protected]. Most TI di... more Please send questions and/or remarks of nonscientific nature to [email protected]. Most TI discussion papers can be downloaded at
Rationalization and the “Engineer-Economists” in the Netherlands, 1920–1940
Including a Symposium on Mary Morgan: Curiosity, Imagination, and Surprise, 2018
Abstract During the interwar period, the Netherlands experienced a phase of rapid industrializati... more Abstract During the interwar period, the Netherlands experienced a phase of rapid industrialization and mechanization and saw the introduction of many new labor-saving techniques on the shop floor. This process, which went under the name “rationalization of production,” caused great concern in the labor movement and sparked an intensive debate over the existence and extent of technological (or permanent) unemployment. Although the problem of technological unemployment was denied by the mainstream economists of the day, the problem was addressed by left-wing, mathematically trained economists such as Theo van der Waerden and Jan Tinbergen. They sought for rigorous “scientific” arguments that would convince policymakers, colleagues, and the public of socialist employment policies. This chapter shows that van der Waerden and Tinbergen used ever-increasing formal methods to face the issue of rationalization, which became politically relevant and controversial in the specific context of the interwar period. Their new scientific tools gave them esteem and influence. In their role as advisers to the government, they gained influence and were able to recommend policies that were in accordance with their political beliefs.
Econoom Peter Rodenburg legt aan de hand van historische vergelijkingen uit dat het succesvol tot... more Econoom Peter Rodenburg legt aan de hand van historische vergelijkingen uit dat het succesvol tot stand komen van een muntunie een zaak van veel geduld en politieke steun is.
Tinbergen on dynamics and conjuncture in Stridiron's 'Bedrijfseconomische encyclopedie
De bedrijfseconoom Jan Goudriaan, jr. (1893-1974) ontwikkelde in de jaren dertig een plan voor ee... more De bedrijfseconoom Jan Goudriaan, jr. (1893-1974) ontwikkelde in de jaren dertig een plan voor een wereldgrondstoffenvaluta om de crisis van de jaren 30 te keren. Het doel van dit artikel is om een analyse en historische reconstructie te geven van Goudriaans macro-economische actieplan en te onderzoeken of Goudriaans ideeen inzichten oplevert die voor de eurocrisis relevant zijn, aangezien de eurocrisis zekere parallellen vertoont met de crisis van de jaren 30. Het artikel concludeert dat Goudriaans plan een actieve rol had kunnen spelen in het bestrijden van de crisis van de jaren 30, maar niet in het bestrijden van de oorzaken van de eurocrisis. Goudriaans grondstoffenvaluta zou waarschijnlijk wel een (bescheiden) bijdrage kunnen leveren aan het stabiliseren van grondstofprijzen, die mede als gevolg van de verruiming van het monetaire beleid, aanzienlijk zijn. 1 Inleiding De Zuid-Europese eurolanden ondergaan momenteel een crisis die in zekere opzichten grote gelijkenis vertoont m...
The establishment of appropriate policy measures for fighting unemployment has always been diffic... more The establishment of appropriate policy measures for fighting unemployment has always been difficult since causes of unemployment are hard to identify. This paper analyses an approach used mainly in the 1960s and 1970s in economics, in which classification is used as a way to deal with such a complex, multiple causal phenomenon like unemployment. The method is based on decomposing unemployment into classes of unemployment and the measurement of each of these classes by reference to stable, measurable macroeconomic relationships like the Phillips curve and the Beveridge curve. In this way economists were able to ‘diagnose’ unemployment and make policy recommendations for fighting unemployment without making explicit reference to the underlying singular causes of unemployment.
How Full is Full Employment
History of Economic Thought and Policy, 2016
Nancy Cartwright views models as blueprints for nomological machines – machines that, if properly... more Nancy Cartwright views models as blueprints for nomological machines – machines that, if properly shielded, generate law-like behaviour or regularities. Marcel Boumans has argued that we can look for devices inside models, which enable us to measure aspects of these regularities. Therefore, if models do produce regular behaviour (Cartwright), they might perhaps generate numbers about phenomena in the world, provided we can locate a good measuring device in the model (Boumans). How do they do this? Models are often understood to consist of internal principles and bridge principles. Both of these play a role in the measuring process. This paper suggests that we can understand the internal principles to be responsible for generating the regularities displayed by the model – and for many users of the model, this is sufficient use. The bridge principles (following Cartwright – ‘the real bridge principles’) are a matter of picking the right mathematical representation to make the model wo...
Bij lancering van de euro telde alleen de Europese integratie
Beleid en Maatschappij, 2017
How Full is Full Employment?How Tools and Not Theory Explained Full Employment
HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, 2016
The post-war debate on full employment policy was blurred and unclear since the concept of full e... more The post-war debate on full employment policy was blurred and unclear since the concept of full employment itself was theoretically unclear and un-operational. Unable to theoretically determine the unemployment level of full employment, economists tried to find more empirically based ways to determine the level of full employment. This paper argues that economists turned the UV curve (or Beveridge curve) and Phillips curve into practical, empirical tools of investigation and measurement for full employment. In this role economists could establish quantitative facts of unemployment that were not derivable from theory alone and so fulfilled the role of a measuring instrument in economics. Consequently, they not only enhanced theory but gave specific, quantitative and empirically based interpretations of full employment that economic theory couldn’t deliver. This paper shows how the UV and Phillips curves became tools for disentangling complex and theoretically underdetermined phenomena and measurement devices for the performance of the labour market.
Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 2014
After World War I the technocratic movement Technocracy Inc. was established in the United States... more After World War I the technocratic movement Technocracy Inc. was established in the United States. Supporters of this movement were utopian engineers who wanted to eradicate waste in American industry, and increasingly considered their methods applicable to the economy and society at large. Technocratic ideas also gained ground in the Netherlands in the interwar period. The purpose of this article is to examine the emergence and development of technocratic thought in the United States and the Netherlands in this period, and to analyze their different patterns of development.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2007
This paper investigates two different procedures for the measurement of the NAIRU; one based on s... more This paper investigates two different procedures for the measurement of the NAIRU; one based on structural modeling while the other is a statistical approach using Vector Auto Regression (VAR)-models. Both measurement procedures are assessed by confronting them with the dominant theory of measurement, the Representation Theory of Measurement, which states that for sound measurement a strict isomorphism (strict one-toone mapping) is needed between variations in the phenomenon (the NAIRU) and numbers. The paper argues that shifts of the Phillips-curve are not a problem for the structural approach to measurement of the NAIRU, as the NAIRU itself is a time-varying concept. It is however, the impossibility to identify the exact shape of the Phillips-curve that causes problems of multiple empirical, relational forms and hence non-unique isomorphic mappings for measurement. While VAR-models are being accused of being 'atheoretical macroeconometrics' in the literature, the Wold decomposition theorem applied to the VAR brings out a stable correspondence between variance of the phenomenon (the NAIRU) and numbers and turns the set of equations into an isomorphic mapping that can serve as a useful foundation for the construction of a measuring instrument.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2004
The establishment of appropriate policy measures for fighting unemployment has always been diffic... more The establishment of appropriate policy measures for fighting unemployment has always been difficult since causes of unemployment are hard to identify. This paper analyses an approach used mainly in the 1960s and 1970s in economics, in which classification is used as a way to deal with such a complex, multiple causal phenomenon like unemployment. The method is based on decomposing unemployment into classes of unemployment and the measurement of each of these classes by reference to stable, measurable macroeconomic relationships like the Phillips curve and the Beveridge curve. In this way economists were able to 'diagnose' unemployment and make policy recommendations for fighting unemployment without making explicit reference to the underlying singular causes of unemployment.
Physics of Fluids - PHYS FLUIDS, 2012
De euro was bedoeld om verdergaande Europese integratie te bewerkstelligen, maar doordat Europese... more De euro was bedoeld om verdergaande Europese integratie te bewerkstelligen, maar doordat Europese regeringsleiders stelselmatig de structurele economische verschillen in Europa negeren, kon de euro zelf bijdragen aan de huidige politieke en economische crisis. Aandacht voor persistente inflatieverschillen en de ontwrichtende werking van de euro zelf is nodig.
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers, 2004
views models as blueprints for nomological machines-machines which, if properly shielded, generat... more views models as blueprints for nomological machines-machines which, if properly shielded, generate lawlike behaviour or regularities. Marcel Boumans has argued that we can look for devices inside models which enable us to measure aspects of these regularities. So, if models do produce regular behaviour (Cartwright), they might perhaps generate numbers about phenomena in the world, provided we can locate a good measuring device in the model (Boumans). How do they do this? Models are often understood to consist of internal principles and bridge principles. Both of these play a role in the measuring process. This paper suggests that we can understand the internal principles to be responsible for generating the regularities displayed by the model-and for many users of the model, this is sufficient use. The bridge principles (following Cartwright-"the real bridge principles") are a matter of picking the right mathematical representation to make the model work with respect to some real world case at hand. These "real" bridge principles may enable the model to generate numbers and so serve to make the model into a measuring device. This paper explores this construction of a measuring device of duration dependence of unemployment. Since search theory can't be made operational for this purpose duration models which model of the outflow process of unemployment with a Weibull function are taken as a representation of reservation wage setting in search models. As I show, this Weibull function serves as a bridge principle to make a measure of the elasticity of response between unemployment benefit and duration of unemployment. It enables measurement to take place by modelling behaviour according to some assumptions, which operate as constraints. While this Weibull function serves this purpose, its assumptions are arbitrary rather than connected to theory, and measurements generated with this bridge principle turn out to be highly sensitive to its specification. The Weibull function does enable the model to function as a measuring device, but the lack of ability to make newly invoked unobservable variables operational makes it of dubious worth.
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Papers by Peter Rodenburg