Dr. C.A. (Cees) van den Beld
Honorary supervisor Prof. Dr. D.J. Schouten - 1972 – Faculteit Economische Wetenschappen
Cornelis Antonius van den Beld (The Hague, 1923–2003) studied economics at the Nederlandse Economische Hogeschool Rotterdam. In 1948, he joined the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), which had been founded a year earlier.
Since its establishment, the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis has played an indispensable role in the preparation and coordination of financial-economic policy in the Netherlands. Van den Beld remained with the Bureau until 1984, serving as its Director since 1966. During this period, he was also Endowed Professor of Economics at Erasmus University, his alma mater.
His successor at the CPB, De Ridder, said in NRC upon Van den Beld's death that "he laid the foundation for a coherent analysis of business cycle and structure in economic models.” Professor Ton van Schaik wrote about CPB in 2012 that, in the first decades, it made mainly periodic short-term estimates, and "occasionally long-term outlooks" or "projections for a period of 20–30 years or longer" that are characterized by the fact that they "always miss the mark because trends from the recent past are, unduly, extended."
In 1984, at the age of 61, van den Beld left the CPB. "I couldn't hear the word funding deficit anymore," he told the employer magazine Forum in 1996. The lesson he drew from his career as policy consultant: the future can be explored, but not predicted.
More about history and academic heritage
The Tilburg University academic heritage is a very diverse set of archives, visual materials, collections, devices, recorded stories, et cetera that relate to the history of the university.