Jan Tinbergen European Peace Science Conference

2019 marks fifty years since the Nobel Prize for Economics was instituted. The first award went to two founding fathers of econometrics (techniques applied to empirical data to test theoretical hypotheses). They were the Dutch economist, Jan Tinbergen and the Norwegian economist Ragnar Frisch. This year also happens to be a quarter of a century since the passing of Jan Tinbergen.

NEPS conference at ISS in The Hague

It is fitting that ISS hosts this year's NEPS conference for a number of reasons. Jan Tinbergen was a founding member of the Economists for Peace and Security, and perhaps the society’s most distinguished doyen on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Although it is well known that Professor Tinbergen enjoyed a long tenure at the Erasmus School of Economics, what is less well known that ISS awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1962.

Jan Tinbergen was a founding member of the Economists for Peace and Security. It is fitting that this year’s NEPS conference, which will witness the presentation of nearly a hundred papers in quantitative conflict studies, is held at the ISS, at the Hague: it is the home town of one of the pioneers of the economics of conflict, who was also one of the ardent and distinguished champions of disarmament and development assistance.

Keynote lecture

The NEPS lecture will be given by Jean Paul Azam, Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse.

In his lecture, 'Let’s Call their Bluff: The Politics of Econometric Methodology', Jean Paul Azam will emphasize that carefully performed empirical analyses can uncover some policymakers' deep motivations that they are not very proud of. In particular, this is illustrated by reporting some  findings showing convincingly that some local governments in India  provoke peasants' insurgencies for mining purposes while claiming to fight the Maoist ideology.