Specific thanks are also due to Bob Parks of the Economics Working Papers Archive (EconWPA) of the Washington university at St. Louis. Over the course of the years much of this work has been put there, and this has been very useful.
On content, I thank prof. dr. Jules Theeuwes (Leiden University), prof. dr. Hans Weddepohl (Amsterdam University) and prof. dr. Jan Siebrand (Erasmus University Rotterdam) for their comments on some of my earlier papers. A discussion with prof. dr. Henk Folmer (Wageningen University) contributed to more clarity in the argument as well. All responsibility is mine of course.
I like to thank my former colleagues at the Dutch Central Planning Bureau (CPB). Without them I would not be the economist that I am now, and I can do them no greater compliment than by advising that the bureau should be promoted, with some modification, to an Economic Supreme Court. My special thanks go to Martin Vromans and Carel Eijgenraam.
I am also indebted to my close friends and family, both Dutch and American, without whose support this work could not have been created.
I think that I usefully state again that I protest against the abuse that has been inflicted onto me by the directorate of the CPB and that has hindered the due course of science.
Not that I entertain any illusion. Most people and organisations that I contacted have been particularly uninterested. Policy makers do not like the idea that the government itself contributes to stagnation. Voters seem to accept unemployment as a natural phenomenon. Academic economists are mainly interested in their own line of research and the possibility of publishing in some journal. Scientific truth, and the interest in scientific integrity in the policy making process, somewhere gets lost. So, having this experience since 1989, an educated guess would be that it might take many more years before my analysis is accepted and before there is any chance that the abuse can be corrected. The main worry of course is that unemployment and poverty hang in here too.
Appendices
On the definition of economics
The body of the text explains the difference of and relationship between ‘economics’ and ‘political economy’. I propose that we all stick to those definitions. But it remains useful to relate to definitions provided by other authors.