Telgen van Tinbergen

“It is a little superfluous for any foreigner to come to Rotterdam to lecture about economics at all. I feel a bit like a 17th century New England smuggler lecturing on seamanship to Admiral Tromp. The trade in economics nowadays is as much the other way: we send our young men to Rotterdam to learn, not our middle-aged professors to teach. Indeed some of our best middle-aged professors are named Koopmans and Houthakker! I suppose the logic of the situation is that I am not import at all; I am to be processed and re-exported, like cocoa beans.” — Robert M. Solow in 1963 when visiting the Rotterdam School of Economics.