ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1945, Labour Prime Minister Drees announced that the Dutch Government would found an economic institution that would periodically draft guidelines for governmental economic policy-making (Passenier, 1994), as part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Despite its name (in Dutch literally Central Planning Bureau), the planning of the economy as foreseen by its first director, and first Nobel Laureate in Economics, Jan Tinbergen, never materialised. Non-socialist parties and employer federations feared the loss of their influence on policymaking. After a difficult start, the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) adapted to consensus-based Dutch policy-making, not least through Tinbergen’s influential Social and Economic Council (SER) membership, as explained below (Luiten van Zanden, 2010). Instead of guidelines and other directives, the CPB started to provide economic policy analysis and macroeconomic forecasts, and became a trusted source of economic data considered relevant for policy-making.
