Jan Pen

Jan Pen (1976)

Jan Pen (born February 15, 1921 in Lemmer , † February 14, 2010 in Haren ) was a Dutch economist, professor and columnist . He is the author of various economics books. Known among non-experts is his illustration of income inequality with the pictorial idea of ​​a parade of incomes - Pen's Parade, which he devised and has since been named after him .

Life and work

Pen studied at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam , where he received his doctorate in 1950 with a thesis on the theory of collective wage negotiations . He was director of general economic policy at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. In 1956 he was appointed professor for political economy and public finance at the law faculty and the economics faculty of the University of Groningen . In 1949 he published his work Moderne Ökonomie , which has been the standard work on the introduction to macroeconomics in the Netherlands for years . It appeared in numerous translations and in 1977 in an updated version under the title Macroeconomics . Pen held his farewell lecture in 1986 , but remained active as a professor emeritus in the economics faculty.

Pen is the inventor of the “Income Parade”. The illustration known internationally as Pen's Parade is a pictorial representation of income inequality . In their graphic representation in a coordinate system , all households or individuals are sorted from poor to rich along the x-axis and the respective value on the y-axis corresponds to their income level . One of the descriptions of the graph is “Parade van dwergen en een enkele reus” (“Parade of dwarfs and a single giant”).

In 1972 Pen was accepted into the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences .

In 1974 Jan Pen gave the third Huizingalezing in Leiden , the Netherlands , an annual lecture on topics of cultural history or philosophy , which was held by Noam Chomsky and Golo Mann , among others . The title of Pen's talk was "The Culture , the Money and the People " (note: or "the people"?). For many years he wrote columns for the Dutch daily newspaper Het Parool , one of the largest Dutch newspapers of the time. In addition, he wrote regularly in Hollands Maandblad and the Economisch Statistical Reports (ESB) .

In his novella Unter Professoren about the academic scene in Groningen, Willem Frederik Hermans made an allusion to Jan Pen with the fictional character of the Tape Pap .

Jan Pen died the day before his 89th birthday.

Jan Pen Prize

The Jan Penprijs is an honorary award awarded annually by the University of Groningen to students with the best work in the field of economics and social sciences .

Works (selection)

Pen wrote countless articles and several books including:

• Modern Economie (German Modern Economy) (1958)
• Income distribution: facts, theories and policies . New edition: Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. ISBN 0-14-021259-0 . (Pelican books) (1974). Orig. Edition: Alen Lane, Penguin Press, London, ISBN 0-7139-0179-9 , (1971)
• Dat stomme economenvolk met zijn holy koeien (dt. The stupid business people with their holy cows). Het Spectrum, Utrecht, ISBN 90-274-5869-3 , (1976) ( online )
• Kijk, economie: over mensen, wensen, werk en geld (German show, economy: about people, desires, work and money). Het Spectrum, Utrecht, ISBN 90-274-9242-5 , (1979)
• How does he heeze gelijk? (Eng. Who's right?). Academic Service, Schoonhoven, ISBN 90-5261-001-0 , (1989)
• Een overzichtelijke wereld: biographical reports (German: a clear world: biographical contributions). Nieuwezijds, Amsterdam, ISBN 90-5712-042-9 , (1998)

Web links

Commons : Jan Pen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jan Pen (1921-2010) . Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 19, 2016.
2. ↑ January Penprijs on the website of the University of Groningen. ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 19, 2016.