Jan Tinbergen

Jan Tinbergen (1903 – 1994) was the eldest of five children of Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen and Jeannette van Eek. From 1929 till 1945 he worked, in addition to his professorship at Erasmus University Rotterdam, for the Dutch statistical office. He was also consultant to the League of Nations. From 1945 till 1955 he served as the first director of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. Jan Tinbergen was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science and of the International Academy of Science. In 1956 he founded the Econometric Institute at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam together with Henri Theil, who also was his successor in Rotterdam. The Tinbergen Institute was named in his honour.

Tinbergen became known for his 'Tinbergen Norm', which states that if the difference between the lowest and highest income in a company exceeds a rate of 1:5, that will not help the company and may indeed be counterproductive.

Tinbergen developed the first national comprehensive macroeconomic model, which he built for the Netherlands and later applied to the United States and the United Kingdom after World War II.

Jan Tinbergen received his ISS Honorary Doctorate in 1962.