The Goudriaan-Tinbergen Debate on Dynamics and Equilibrium: 1931-1952

Abstract

In the 1930s, two Dutch economists, Jan Tinbergen and Jan Goudriaan, developed their own economic framework with competing ideas about the stability, equilibrium and dynamics of the economy. The debate between them lasted for more than twenty years. The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical reconstruction of their debate on stability and dynamics, and to analyse their influence on both economic theory and the economic policy debate in the Netherlands. The paper argues that the policy debate in the Netherlands on the crisis can be characterized as a controversy between Tinbergen’s and Goudriaan’s competing theories, and was, in fact, a debate over different metaphors for the economy – Jan Goudriaan’s metaphor of a ‘collapsing bridge’ vs. Jan Tinbergen’s ‘pendulum with friction’ – in which Goudriaan’s approach failed to deliver the sort of rigour economists were seeking for the analysis of business cycles.