Chapter 9 details Tinbergen’s activities during World War II when he was working at the Central Bureau of Statistics. It uncovers crucial details about his relationship to the German occupiers and the peculiar deal he struck with them, in particular, Ernst Wagemann, to maintain some degree of independence for the institute. It also seeks to understand his attitude toward fascism, which he strongly condemned at a personal level, but whose economic policies he repeatedly praised in his writings, both before and during the war. The restrictions imposed on research at the CBS during the war meant that Tinbergen could not continue his studies into the business cycle, which had been declared a relic of the past by the Germans. In response to these restrictions Tinbergen wrote some of his more systematic work in economic theory and economic growth, further removed from policy. What is most striking is that precisely during the turbulent 1930s and 1940s a notion of an autonomous economic system emerged in his work. This detachment from politics and society is analyzed in detail. The chapter closes with a discussion of his efforts during the early Reconstruction years as director of the newly founded Central Planning Bureau.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is legally designated the country’s independent central statistical authority with formal responsibility for all official statistics. Despite formal emphasis on statistical centralisation in Australia, there has been significant growth in official statistical production outside the ABS in recent decades. I argue that this is partly a product of a perceived tension between maintaining depoliticisation and meeting the needs of policymakers for new information, a tension managed by restricting ABS responsibilities to core statistical programs and creating new statistical agencies and programs to meet policymaker needs. ABS statisticians have exacerbated this trend by insisting on their absolute impartiality and sacrificing their claim to policy usefulness. ABS has a strong bias towards the production of economic indicators, reflecting the institutional settings it has operated in, including its formal location within the Department of the Treasury. The latter has relied on the ABS to bolster its own credibility in economic policy and has actively hindered the ABS from expanding into other statistical subject areas.