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THE PALGRAVE
COMPA NION TO
OX FOR D
ECONOM ICS
Edited by Robert A. Cord

The Palgrave Companion to Oxford Economics
Robert A. Cord
Editor
The Palgrave
Companion to Oxford
Economics
Editor
Robert A. Cord
Researcher in Economics
London, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-58470-2 ISBN 978-3-030-58471-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58471-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2021
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For Sissi and Herbert
Introduction
This is a volume about the economics and economists associated with the
University of Oxford. It is the third in a series to be published by Palgrave
examining the many and varied contributions made by important centres of
economics. With only a very few exceptions, the focus of most history of eco-
nomic thought studies, at least in terms of books,1 has been on schools of
thought. Such an approach provides valuable insights into how competing
schools interact and how some come to predominate, for whatever reason and
length of time, while others fall out of fashion or indeed never attain any par-
ticular notoriety. However, a key deficiency of such a modus operandi is that it
often fails to illuminate the many processes and tensions that can and do
occur at the level of the individual university, the personnel of which may be
fighting internal battles for supremacy whilst trying to establish external
hegemony.
Each volume in the series consists of two parts. The first contains a set of
chapters which consider the contributions made by a centre where these con-
tributions are considered to be especially important, this subject to a mixture
of personal preferences and soundings from those who know better. The sec-
ond, longer part is made up of chapters discussing the contributions of indi-
vidual economists attached to a particular centre. ‘Attached’ is the crucial
word. Some economists are easy to identify with a single institution as they
may, for example, have spent their whole academic careers at it. Those who
have moved from institution to institution are the more difficult case. One
way forward in these instances is to place an economist in the institution
1
Articles are of course another matter.
vii
viii Introduction
where they carried out their most important work, although this, in its turn,
carries with it the danger of disagreement over what ‘their most important
work’ was or is perceived to be and how this has changed over time. Another
factor perhaps worthy of consideration is an economist’s education. Where
such an education has been received at the knee of a master, to what extent has
this influenced the subsequent work of the noted pupil and how should this
be considered when that pupil has flown the nest and settled at another insti-
tution? Issues of leadership style, discipleship, loyalty and access to publica-
tion outlets and to financing also enter the frame. Finally, there are issues of
practicality, including space constraints and unavailability of contributors,
among others. Given this matrix of possibilities, disagreement about who
should be in which volume is inevitable. However, I hope that the outrage will
not be too great given the overarching goal of the series.
The next volume in the series will examine the University of Chicago.
Robert A. Cord
Contents
Part I Themes in Oxford Economics 1
1 Oxford’s Contributions to Econometrics 3

David F. Hendry and Bent Nielsen
2 Development Economics at Oxford, 1950–2020 29

Frances Stewart and Valpy FitzGerald
3 Oxford’s Contributions to Industrial Economics

from the 1920s to the 1980s 75
Lise Arena
4 Economic History at Oxford, 1860–2020101

Avner Offer
5 PPE and Oxford Economics131

Warren Young and Frederic S. Lee
6 The Oxford Institute of Statistics, 1935–1962147

Jan Toporowski
ix
x Contents
Part II Some Oxford Economists 161
7 Nassau Senior (1790–1864)163

John Vint
8 William Forster Lloyd (1794–1852)195

Vincent Barnett
9 Bonamy Price (1807–1888)207

Robert J. Bigg
10 Thorold Rogers (1823–1890)235

Robert A. Cord
11 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926)257

John Creedy
12 David Hutchison Macgregor (1877–1953)283

Lowell Jacobsen
13 Roy F. Harrod (1900–1978)309

Walter Eltis
14 Robert Lowe Hall (1901–1988)331

Warren Young
15 Thomas Balogh (1905–1985)347

Andrew Graham
16 Colin Clark (1905–1989)371

Alex Millmow
17 P.W.S. Andrews (1914–1971)395

John E. King
18 Hrothgar John Habakkuk (1915–2002)417

F. M. L. Thompson
19 David Worswick (1916–2001)441

Rosalind Seneca
Contents xi
20 Ian Little (1918–2012)471

Christopher Bliss and Vijay Joshi
21 W.M. Gorman (1923–2003)503

Patrick Honohan and Peter Neary
22 W. Max Corden (1927–)521

John Martin
23 Derek Robinson (1932–2014)545

Ken Mayhew
24 David F. Hendry (1944–)563

Neil R. Ericsson
25 Avner Offer (1944–)623

Joshua Getzler
26 John Muellbauer (1944–)645

John Duca
27 Paul Collier (1949–)673

David Fielding
28 Anthony J. Venables (1953–)689

Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano
29 Paul David Klemperer (1956–)711

Huw Dixon
30 John Vickers (1958–)735

Peter Sinclair
Notes on Contributors761
Index771
List of Figures
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 UK GDP reconstructions, 1300–1700 18
Figure 1.2 UK domestic CO2 emissions in tons per person per year,
1860–201819
xiii
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Appendix 1 Pre-War Members of OERG 95
Appendix 2 Post-War Members of OERG 96
Chapter 23
Appendix 1 The Retail Price Index (RPI) and Unemployment in the UK,
1960–1985560
xv
Part I
Themes in Oxford Economics
1
Oxford’s Contributions to Econometrics
David F. Hendry and Bent Nielsen
1 Introduction1
The name econometrics was a neologism created by Ragnar Frisch to charac-
terise a discipline concerned with advancing economic theory in its relation to
statistics and mathematics. As a founding member of the Econometric Society
and its journal Econometrica in the early 1930s, Frisch wanted to promote
research that unified ‘the theoretical-quantitative and the empirical-
quantitative approach to economic problems’ (Frisch 1933: 1). Since then,
however, the term econometrics has come to signify just the statistical aspects
of quantitative economics research as with A Textbook of Econometrics (Klein
1953) or just Econometrics (as in Valavanis 1959). There remained a branch
emphasising the more general aspect, in that textbooks were titled Statistical
Methods of Econometrics (see Malinvaud 1966), which was also the name of
the main econometrics course for the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree in
Economics at the University of Oxford when the first author arrived there
in 1982.
1
We are grateful to Steve Bond, John Creedy, Christopher L. Gilbert, Grayham E. Mizon, James Poterba
and Jan Toporowski for helpful information about Oxford econometrics and recollections from their
time at the University and to John Gittins for permission to quote from his history of Oxford statistics
(Gittins 2013).
D. F. Hendry (*) • B. Nielsen

Department of Economics and Nuffield College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: david.hendry@nuffield.ox.ac.uk; bent.nielsen@economics.ox.ac.uk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 3

R. A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Oxford Economics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58471-9_1
4 D. F. Hendry and B. Nielsen
Given the relatively recent definition of econometrics, and its subsequent

narrowing, much of the early history of the discipline must be conceptualised
as economics in relation to statistics, as we do here, including the creation and
curation of observations on economic phenomena. Moreover, “statistics” still
refers both to the discipline which studies methods of statistical analysis (as in
a department of statistics) and to summary measures of observations (as in the
statistics of crime). Schumpeter (1933: 5) claimed that in contrast to the
physical sciences that had to create their measures, ‘Some of the most funda-
mental economic facts, on the contrary, already present themselves to our
observation as quantities made numerical by life itself ’. However, that still
requires that such facts be recorded and combined over events, time and peo-
ple to be useful for analysis. We include researchers who undertake such
invaluable tasks as econometricians, which leads to a surprisingly rich history
of the subject at Oxford before the 1930s.
General histories of econometrics are provided by Morgan (1990) and Qin
(1993, 2013), with an overview and selected reprints of key papers in The
Foundations of Econometric Analysis by Hendry and Morgan (1995). Thomas
(2018) records the important role the London School of Economics (LSE)
played in the development of econometrics in the twentieth century and also
in beginning the study of the history of econometrics. Oxford econometri-
cians continued that development of the history of their discipline. In addi-
tion to the two books by Qin and that by Hendry and Morgan, see Qin and
Gilbert (2001) and Gilbert and Qin (2006, 2007), both of whom had been
doctoral students or faculty at Oxford.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. Section 2 describes the early his-
tory of contributions to quantitative economics as embryonic econometrics
from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Section 3 discusses econo-
metrics at Oxford over 1900−1980, including major advances in creating
aggregate economic measurements. Section 4 updates the history from 1980
to 2000, before Section 5 records Oxford econometrics in the twenty-first
century to about 2010, after which point it is no longer “history”, although
such time divisions are arbitrary and many individuals span several of these
sections. Section 6 describes contributions to data provision in the twenty-
first century before Section 7 considers the most recent addition of climate
econometrics, developing and applying econometric tools for analysing cli-
mate data, which is driven by human economic behaviour and so faces much
the same slew of econometric problems as macroeconomic time series.
2 arly Days: Seventeenth–Nineteenth

E
Century Contributions
2.1 Sir William Petty
One of the earliest records of advances in economics related to statistics, later

to become econometrics, can be attributed to the Oxford graduate Sir William
Petty (1623−1687). Petty came from a relatively humble background and was
largely self-taught initially, sufficient to study medicine at Oxford, and indeed
become anatomy tutor at Brasenose College as well as being a physician. As
antecedents, he had acted as personal secretary to Thomas Hobbes through
whom he was able to meet many of the prominent European philosophers of
the time. At Oxford, he became a friend of Robert Boyle and was a member
of the Oxford Philosophical Club, a precursor to the Royal Society of London
of which he was a Founding Fellow. He seems to have been influenced by the
empirical scientific approach of Francis Bacon, so Petty was a man with wide
interests (see McCormick 2009).
However, it was only after moving permanently to Ireland that he became
interested in economics. These earlier influences had led to Petty deciding that
mathematics and the senses must be the basis of all rational sciences based on
Bacon’s Novum Organum. A desire to achieve that goal focused his interests on
empirical phenomena that were measurable and so could be quantified, rather
than merely described, leading to the creation of a new discipline that he
called Political Arithmetick, published posthumously in a book of that title in
1690 (see Petty 1690). Consequently, Petty has a strong claim to be viewed as
one of the first quantitative economists. He discerned what he viewed as a
seven-year business cycle, suggesting a possible basis for systematic economic
forecasts, although historically, cycles ‘vary greatly in duration and intensity’
(Zarnowitz 2004: 1). Petty was later to prove a considerable influence on
Colin Clark, as we discuss in Section 3.
2.2 Florence Nightingale
In his history of Oxford statistics written to celebrate the 25th anniversary of

the Department of Statistics in 2013, Professor John Gittins notes:
Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of modern nursing, following her experiences

during the Crimean war, was also an enthusiast for statistical methods. In the
1870s, she discussed the possibility with her friend Benjamin Jowett, Master of
Balliol College, of endowing a Professorship of Statistics in Oxford to which
they both agreed to contribute, and later further discussed the idea with Francis
Galton, another pioneer of applied statistics. Writing to Galton in 1891, she
suggested that the professorship should address the need for statistics relating to
education, penology, workhouses and India. In his response, Galton stressed the
importance of the new professor doing research as well as teaching, and also
questioned the suitability of Oxford as the home for this venture. Neither com-
ment blended well with Miss Nightingale’s vision and, partly for these reasons,
sadly the proposal foundered (Gittins 2013: 4).
Nevertheless, the Department of Statistics at Oxford now has a Florence

Nightingale Bicentennial Fellowship and Tutor in Statistics and Probability as
well as a Florence Nightingale Lecture: 2020 being her bicentenary may see
other forms of recognition. Her role in statistics is not as well known as that
in nursing, but Nightingale was a pioneer in using graphical presentations of
statistical data, such as the pie chart, to convey persuasive messages. She is
credited with developing the polar-area diagram (which she called a “cox-
comb”) to illustrate seasonal mortality in the Crimean War hospital she man-
aged (see Nightingale 1858: 310–311). Nightingale was elected the first
female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1859 and became an
Honorary Member of the American Statistical Association in 1874.
2.3 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
However, the University of Oxford did appoint someone we would now call
an econometrician to a chair in 1891, namely Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (see
Bowley 1934). This was not to a chair in statistics, but as the Drummond
Professor of Political Economy at All Souls. Edgeworth was an Irish philoso-
pher and political economist who had previously been Tooke Professor of
Economic Science and Statistics in London and made many significant con-
tributions to statistical methods. Earlier in life, he had been a student in phi-
losophy at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1867 to 1869, so was doubly
connected with the University.
In statistics, Edgeworth’s name is remembered through Edgeworth series,
which approximate a probability density function in terms of its cumulants.
He published many papers on statistics and his principle of maximum prob-
ability is an early version of likelihood (Edgeworth 1887). He also contrib-
uted to index number analysis. Stigler (1978: 295) viewed Edgeworth’s plan
as to ‘adapt the statistical methods of the theory of errors to the quantification
of uncertainty in the social, particularly economic, sciences’ and provides an
excellent discussion of its implementation. The Royal Statistical Society
awarded Edgeworth the Guy Medal in 1907 and he served as its President dur-
ing 1912−1914. Edgeworth was also influential in the development of neoclas-
sical economics, perhaps best known for the Edgeworth−Bowley box diagram.
In 1891, he was appointed as the founding editor of the Economic Journal,
where he continued as editor or joint editor until his death 35 years later (for
more details on Edgeworth, see Chapter 11 in this volume by Creedy).
3 Econometrics at Oxford, 1900–1980

3.1 Colin Clark
Colin Clark is the next important econometrician at Oxford. Clark compiled

the first modern set of national income accounts (NIAs) for the UK and pur-
sued data collection on a worldwide scale. He was born in London and stud-
ied chemistry at Brasenose College (1924−1928), Petty’s old college, where he
became a Fellow for a time, and later was Director of the Agricultural
Economics Research Institute at Oxford. His hero was indeed Petty, and like
Petty, he started academically as a scientist so was self-taught in economics,
with a similar creative imagination, also displaying brilliance and originality
from an early age. Clark was first appointed Lecturer in Statistics at the
University of Cambridge in 1931, before moving to Australia, where he spent
a year at the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney, then as Director of the
Queensland Bureau of Industry and as the Queensland Government
Statistician between 1938 and 1953 before he returned to England, but set-
tled permanently in Australia from 1978.
His Herculean data collection efforts in the 1930s remain unparalleled to
the modern day. He was inspired by Bowley (1895, 1913), and built on key
contributions by Marshall (1890), who had considered an aggregate idea of
national income, leading to the modern measure of gross domestic product
(GDP). Alfred Flux (1924, 1929) was another precursor who, with Bowley,
pioneered the Census of Production to create a measure from the supply side
as well as estimating the national income, as was Stamp (1916) (see Tily
2009). Tily as well as Millmow (2019) and Chapter 16 of the current volume
provide excellent discussions of Clark’s major contributions to the develop-
ment of national income accounts, and as Tily remarks: ‘The breadth and
depth of Colin Clark’s work in the 1930s–funded from his own resources, it
should be added—marked him out as the most resourceful and innovative
National Accountant of them all’ (Tily 2009: 356). (See Darnell (2018) for
more detail on Bowley.)
Clark is credited with inventing the concept of “gross national product”

before Kuznets (1946) invented GDP, and later was influential in setting up
the national accounts for Australia. He produced many journal papers and
books, including The National Income, 1924–1931, published in 1932 (Clark
1932), and National Income and Outlay, in 1937 (Clark 1937). Clark also
developed a system of equations explaining the US trade cycle during the
period 1921–1941 (Clark 1949), an embryonic macroeconomic model and
contributed to development studies (see Maddison 2004).
3.2 Oxford Institute of Statistics
The next significant step in the development of Oxford statistics was again by
its economists, who were increasingly keen to build economic theory on a
foundation of sound data analysis. This led to the creation in 1935 of an
Institute of Statistics financed by the Rockefeller Foundation with a Director
holding a new Readership in Statistics (see Chapter 6 in this volume by
Toporowski). As Oxford’s first research institute in statistics, the new organ-
isation was concerned with economics as well as statistics in relation to eco-
nomic data, features made more obvious in 1962 when it was renamed the
Institute of Economics and Statistics (IES). Chester (1986) provides a history
of IES to 1985.
The first Director of the Institute of Statistics in 1935 was the econometri-
cian Jacob Marschak, who was born in Kiev in 1898 as the son of a Jewish
jeweller. Marschak had lived an eventful life in Russia and Germany until
coming to Oxford fleeing Hitler. He moved to the USA in 1938 where he had
a distinguished career at the Cowles Commission.
During the war years, the Acting Director of the Institute was Sir Arthur
Bowley, the distinguished economic statistician who had recently retired from
a chair at LSE. Although not primarily a statistician, Michał Kalecki was also
housed at the Institute from 1939 to 1945 where he contributed to analysing
data on many aspects of the Second World War, publishing in the Bulletin.
Hubert Henderson, Acting Director of the Institute at the time, recorded his
appreciation for Kalecki when he left: ‘[T]he repute that the Institute has won
as a war-time centre of lively, yet scientific and realistic economic study, owes
much to your stimulating influence’ (Henderson quoted in Toporowski 2018:
141). David Worswick (see Chapter 19 in this volume by Seneca) was at the
Institute from 1940 to 1960, but did not regard econometrics favourably,
arguing that it made ‘pretend-tools’ (Worswick 1972: 79) while trying to
achieve Frisch’s aims.
The Readership was then filled by David Champernowne, who also became
Director of the Institute from 1945 to 1948 and Professor of Statistics from
1948 to 1959, after which he returned to Cambridge where he had read
mathematics and then economics, graduating in 1934. Champernowne went
on to do research on income distribution, for which he was the first to provide
a statistical model. In 1937, this work earned him a Prize Fellowship at King’s
College, Cambridge. He continued to work on income distribution for the
rest of his academic career (see Boianovsky 2017 for more details).
The Oxford Institute of Statistics then became home to a steady stream of
distinguished economic statisticians and econometricians. In roughly chrono-
logical order, Frank Burchardt was the Director after Champernowne in
1948, and he helped attract Lawrence Klein, later a Nobel Prize winner. Klein
worked at the Institute from 1954 to 1958 during the McCarthy era, and
helped develop the first UK macroeconometric model with James Ball, Arthur
Hazlewood and Peter Vandome (Klein et al. 1961a). Klein spoke of his asso-
ciation with the Institute in its early days in his Nobel Prize autobiography.2
Some of the papers related to Klein’s macroeconomic modelling were pub-
lished in the Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics, estab-
lished in 1939, changing its name in 1973 to the Oxford Bulletin of Economics
and Statistics. Ball et al. (1959) published “Econometric Forecasts for 1959”
(for the UK) in the February issue of 1959, while the February 1961 issue
contained “Re-estimation of the Econometric Model of the UK and Forecasts
for 1961” by Klein et al. (1961b). That issue also published “A Post-Mortem
on Econometric Forecasts for 1959” by Hazlewood and Vandome.
Next, IES was home to Gerhard Stuvel (see, for example, Stuvel 1965),
Christopher Winsten (whose serial correlation correction method in a 1954
Cowles Discussion Paper with Sig Prais became widely cited (Prais and
Winsten 1954)), N. Schwartz and John Hammersley (at Oxford from 1961
and whose excellent 1964 book on Monte Carlo methods with David
Hanscomb (Hammersley and Handscomb 1964) helped Hendry and Pravin
Trivedi develop their 1972 paper: Hendry and Trivedi 1972). They were fol-
lowed by a non-econometrician, Teddy Jackson, as Director, then Hendry
(who was Director from 1982 to 1984) and Stephen Nickell, who was its final
Director from 1984 to 1997.
3.3 James Meade
James Meade (later another Nobel Prize Laureate) was born in Swanage,
Dorset, in 1907 and attended Oriel College, Oxford, in 1926 to read Greats,
2
See https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1980/klein/biographical/.
but switched to Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), securing an

outstanding First. During 1930−1931, he was a postgraduate at Christ’s and
Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, where he had discussions with Dennis Robertson
and John Maynard Keynes among other distinguished economists. Meade
was a Lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1931 to 1937 before going
to the League of Nations. In the Second World War, he was a member of the
Economic Section of the War Cabinet Secretariat. It was in that role that
together with Richard Stone (see Barker 2017) they developed estimates of
UK national income accounts (NIAs) under Keynes, who perhaps had under-
stood the crucial role of data from his (1920) calculations of the impossibility
of Germany paying the reparations imposed in the Treaty of Versailles, as well
as Keynes’s desire to know what resources the UK had available to fight the
Second World War (see Howson 2017 for more details).
The Oxford Savings Surveys were another major data resource, first analysed
by Fisher (1956), reinforcing Oxford economics role in data curation. That
paper led to the complete May 1957 issue of the Bulletin being devoted to
empirical studies of the consumption function with a galaxy of contributors,
including Albert Ando and Franco Modigliani, Milton Friedman, Trygve
Haavelmo, Lawrence Klein, Denis Sargan and James Tobin, making five Nobel
Laureates (Hendry and Phillips (2018) provide more detail about Sargan).
3.4 Martin Feldstein
Martin Feldstein was a Fellow of Nuffield from 1964 to 1967, the year in
which he received his DPhil (doctorate) supervised by Terence Gorman (and
later became an Honorary Fellow). Feldstein’s research pioneered the empiri-
cal analysis of production functions for hospitals using differences in location
and time within the National Health Service (NHS) to estimate the costs and
benefits of various medical procedures. His findings were published in both
medical and economics journals, as well as a book (Feldstein 1967), helping
shift analyses of healthcare productivity from studies of specific cases to
population data sets (see https://voxeu.org/article/ideas-and-influence-
martin-feldstein-1939-2019).
3.5 Grayham Ernest Mizon
Grayham Mizon was the RTZ Research Fellow at St Catherine’s College,

Oxford, from 1970 to 1973 during which time he published important
research on estimation and inferential procedures in non-linear models,
before returning to LSE (see Mizon 1974, 1977). He remained a long-term

collaborator of Hendry and was a key participant in most of the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded econometrics research
programmes at Nuffield College from 1988 to 2002 and an Associate at the
Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School from
2012 to 2018.
3.6 Alan Brown
Alan Brown moved to Oxford in 1970 and was associated with IES and as
editor of the Bulletin until his death in 1984 (see, for example, Aitchison and
Brown 1957, and Brown and Deaton 1972). Stone (1985: 194) refers to
Brown as ‘a mainstay of advanced studies in econometrics and development
economics’ and Creedy (2008: 8) admired him as a thesis supervisor (Brown
had examined Hendry’s PhD thesis).
3.7 Other Faculty
Other faculty who also taught econometrics at Oxford before (and after) 1980
included Michael Dempster who did so during the 1970s, as did Michael
Surrey (see Surrey 1971), Robert Bacon (see, for example, Bacon 1991), fol-
lowed by David Begg (see Corker and Begg 1985), and Christopher Gilbert
(see Gilbert 1976, 1986). Jerry Hausman was a doctoral student then, gradu-
ating in 1973 (see Hausman 1974—later also an Honorary Fellow of
Nuffield). As a lead into the next section, Jim Poterba was a doctoral student
supervised by Hendry, graduating in 1983 when he was already a Junior
Research Fellow at Nuffield (see, for instance, Poterba and Summers 1983).
4 Oxford Econometrics, 1980–2000

When Teddy Jackson retired as IES Director in 1982 after focusing on devel-
opment economics, the University proposed closing the Institute as part of
the savings it needed, but offered the first author (newly arrived from LSE)
the chance to run it (unpaid) to see if it could pay its way. By renegotiating
the royalties accruing to its Bulletin sufficiently to fund a full-time Director,
in 1984 Steve Nickell (see Ours 2018 for more detail) was attracted to that
role, which he held until IES was merged into the new Department of
Economics. IES and the Bulletin quickly returned to their statistical roots by
being at the forefront of the cointegration wave, and by 1986 the Bulletin was
becoming one of the most cited “statistics” journals, though read by few non-
economics statisticians! While he was Director, Hendry started a tradition of
fortnightly econometrics lunches where all interested faculty and graduate
students could meet and discuss their teaching and research, which still con-
tinues. Throughout, there has also been a fortnightly econometrics seminar as
a venue for non-Oxford speakers.
It often surprises readers that despite having existed for hundreds of years,
Oxford did not have a department of economics until almost the end of the
twentieth century (for a brief history, see https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/
about/about-homepage). Before 1997, economics teaching was college based,
with colleges having their own fellows who taught PPE. There was a taught
BPhil degree for graduates from 1945, which became an MPhil in 1979, with
much more technical economics and econometrics content. Over this period,
economics had a “sub-faculty” status with IES and Nuffield College being
focal points. By way of comparison, the Department of Statistics was only
created in 1988.
4.1 Nuffield College
Somewhat earlier, Nuffield College had been founded in 1937 as a graduate

college of the University specialising in the social sciences, particularly eco-
nomics, politics (especially psephology) and sociology. Nuffield had close ties
with IES, many of whose members were fellows of the College. Before the
creation of an Economics Department, Nuffield acted in lieu of a department
as it had the largest number of economics faculty, with many of the main
graduate lecture courses taught in the College. Statisticians and econometri-
cians have also often served as its Warden, including Sir David Cox,
1988−1994, Sir Tony Atkinson, 1994−2005 (see Jenkins 2017 for more
details), Sir Stephen Nickell, 2006−2012, and Sir Andrew Dilnot since then.
Other statisticians who were fellows have included Klim McPherson, Clive
Payne, Lucy Carpenter, David Firth, Garett Fitzmaurice and Tom Snijders;
and its econometricians included Terence Gorman (see Chapter 21 in this
volume by Neary and Honohan), John Muellbauer (see Chapter 26 by Duca),
Hendry (see Chapter 24 by Ericsson) and Bent Nielsen (see, for example,
Harbo et al. 1998 and Johansen and Nielsen 2009) in addition to those men-
tioned elsewhere. Nielsen has collaborated with many other Oxford faculty
(see, for instance, Hendry and Nielsen 2007 and Vanessa Berenguer-Rico and
Nielsen 2020) and contributed to a wide range of econometric theory devel-
opments as well as to teaching.
Neil Ericsson joined Nuffield from LSE in 1982 as a Research Officer on

an ESRC award with Hendry, starting another long collaboration from
Hendry and Ericsson (1983), eventually published in 1991 as Hendry and
Ericsson (1991). Adrian Neale followed in 1986, helping develop a menu-
driven program for Monte Carlo simulation experiments (see Hendry and
Neale 1987). Olympia Bover was a Research Officer, 1985−1987, then
Research Fellow, 1987–1989, at Nuffield and Manuel Arellano was also a
Research Fellow at Nuffield, 1986−1989, and Research Lecturer at IES,
1985−1989. Together with Steve Bond, Fellow at Nuffield since 1990 and
previously a student there from 1984, he published the much-cited Arellano
and Bond (1991) paper. This provided an estimation method for dynamic
panels where the time-series dimension was relatively short. Gavin Cameron
came in 1992 and mainly published with Muellbauer (see Cameron and
Muellbauer 1998). Hans-Martin Krolzig joined as a Research Officer at IES
and an Associate at Nuffield for a decade from 1995 and published extensively
on Markov-switching and business-cycle modelling (see Krolzig 1997) as well
as on econometric modelling with Hendry (see, for example, Hendry and
Krolzig 1999). Stan Hurn, 1996–1998, and Katy Graddy also researched
econometrics.
Two other long collaborations for Hendry that began in IES were with
Mike Clements and Jurgen Doornik. That with Clements started with his
doctorate, leading to a paper by Clements and Hendry (1993) (where the
discussion was longer than the paper!), and numerous publications since,
including Clements and Hendry (1998), as well as his participating in many
of the ESRC research programmes at Nuffield (see ibid.). That with Doornik
began in 1989, initially as a Research Officer on ESRC research programmes
and then a Research Fellow at Nuffield College from 1996 on, developing Ox,
an object-oriented matrix language (see https://doornik.com/ox/, leading to
Doornik and Hendry 1992, applied in Hendry and Doornik 1994; also see
the much-used test in Doornik and Hansen 2008).
Neil Shephard was a Fellow of Nuffield over 1991−2013 and Professor of
Economics, 1999−2013, actively researching financial econometrics (see, for
example, Ole Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard 2001, 2002, 2004a, b, 2006,
for which he received the Royal Statistical Society’s Guy Medal in Silver). He
contributed importantly to econometric modelling of realised volatility, and
developed stochastic volatility models, as well as methods for handling jumps
in financial time series in research linked to similar advances for modelling
breaks in macroeconomic data. Shephard also formulated methods for non-
Gaussian and non-linear models, and with Michael Pitt, developed filtering
by simulation using auxiliary particle filters (see Pitt and Shephard 1999).
While at Nuffield, he was awarded a number of ESRC grants where Tina
Rydberg (see, for instance, Rydberg and Shephard 2003) and Frank Gerhard
(see Gerhard and Hautsch 2002) were Research Officers. He co-founded the
Econometrics Journal with David Hendry and his later research is discussed in
Section 5.
Richard Spady was an Official Fellow of Nuffield over 1992−1999, and a
regular visitor since then, researching non- and semi-parametric methods.
Oliver Linton, a Research Fellow there from 1991 to 1993, also researched
non-parametric methods. Bronwyn Hall, Professor of Economics and
Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College, 1996−2001, brought a strong interest in
econometric computing, and her Time Series Processor (TSP) software was
linked into OxMetrics.
4.2 Doctoral Students
A major driving force behind advances in econometrics across a vast range of

topics during the period from 1980 was a succession of brilliant DPhil stu-
dents adding to those mentioned above, including Anindya Banerjee (later a
Fellow of Wadham College), Gregor Smith, John Galbraith, Juan Dolado
(see, for example, Banerjee et al. 1986, 1993), Kate Desbarats, Carlo Favero
(see Favero and Hendry 1992), Andreas Fischer (see Fischer 1989), Kivilcim
Metin (see Metin 1995), Karim Abadir (see, for instance, Abadir 1992),
Rebecca Emerson (see Emerson and Hendry 1996), Steven Cook (see Cook
and Hendry 1993), Claudio Lupi (see Brunello et al. 2001), Pekka Pere (see
Pere 2000) and Edmund Cannon (see Cannon and Tonks 2004).
In addition, some of the DPhil econometricians went into the commercial
and public sectors, including Fritz Struth (state-space modelling), Massimo
Fuggetta (financial econometrics: founder of Bayes Investments), Ian Harnett
(consumption expenditure: founder of Absolute Strategy Research) and
Lamin Leigh (money demand: who joined the IMF).
4.3 Research Funding
Over the period 1984−2000, numerous ESRC-funded research grants were

attracted to Nuffield by research teams, including various econometricians
from Arellano, Banerjee, Clements, Doornik, Hendry, Mizon, Muellbauer,
Nielsen, Shephard and John Walker, totalling almost £2 million in nominal
terms. In rough chronological order from 1984, grants investigated included
Expectational Variables and Feedback Mechanisms, Structural Change, Model
Evaluation, Economic Policy, Cointegration, Modelling Non-stationarity,
Financial Econometrics and Forecasting, the last of which was then supported
by a five-year Leverhulme Personal Research Professorship for Hendry.
Links to economic historians continued to be important to the econome-
tricians, especially with major data creators like Charles Feinstein (see Feinstein
1972) and Stephen Broadberry (see Section 6 in Offer 2017 and Chapter 4 in
this volume by Offer), including joint teaching of a quantitative approach to
the UK’s inter-war experience.
Nuffield also acted as a venue for many visiting econometricians, including
several visits by (amongst others) Clive Granger, Rob Engle, Adrian Pagan,
who was also a Nuffield Fellow for a period (see their interviews by Phillips
1997, Diebold 2003 and Skeels 2016 respectively in Econometric Theory),
Paul Ruud, Tom Rothenberg, Anders Rahbek and Gunnar Bårdsen.
5 Oxford Econometrics
in the Twenty-First Century
With the creation of the Department of Economics in Manor Road, the insti-
tutional framework for Oxford econometrics changed. At the same time, the
number of graduate students grew dramatically across the University and in
economics, where a new MSc in Financial Economics was created jointly with
the Saïd Business School in 2003. The Nuffield post-doc programme expanded
as a joint venture with the Department. A compulsory econometrics compo-
nent was introduced in the undergraduate PPE programme.
The econometricians who arrived in Oxford at the faculty level over this
period included Valérie Lechene, 1999–2006, Adrian Pagan, 2000–2003,
Kevin Shephard, 2004, Martin Browning, 2006–2019, Debopam
Bhattacharya, 2009–2015, Jennifer Castle, 2009, Sophocles Mavroeidis,
2011, Michael Keane, 2012–2017, James Wolter, 2013–2018, Vanessa
Berenguer-Rico, 2015, James Duffy, 2016, Anders Kock, 2017, Frank
DiTraglia, 2019, Max Kasy, 2020 and Frank Windmeijer, 2020. There has
been a constant flow of post-docs in econometrics, including Ola Elerian,
2001–2002, Jeremy Large, 2005–2008, Jennifer Castle, 2006–2009, Brendan
Beare, 2007–2008, Mika Meitz, 2006–2008, Shin Kanaya, 2008–2012,
Vitaliy Oryshchenko, 2011–2014, Vanessa Berenguer-Rico, 2012–2014,
Daniel Gutknecht, 2012–2015, James Wolter, 2012–2013, Liang Chen,
2013–2016, Yingying Lee, 2013–2016, Marianne Bruins, 2014–2018, James
Duffy, 2014–2016, Ryoko Ito, 2015–2017, Felix Pretis, 2015–2018, Stefan
Hubner, 2016, Sander Barendse, 2018, Xiyu Jiao, 2019, and Susana Martins,
2019. Research Officers included Marianne Sensier, Anthony Murphy and
Luca Nunziato. Following the 2008 financial crisis, Hendry received funding
from the Institute for New Economic Thinking to set up a Program for
Economic Modelling and to develop tools for forecasting after crises, which
partly funded a number of the post-docs.
DPhil students in econometrics included Sule Akkoyunlu, Mavroeidis,
Domenico Lombardi, Michael Massmann, Guillaume Chevillon, Castle, Carlos
Santos, James Reade, Nicholas Fawcett, Julia Giese, Sonja Keller Canto, Pretis,
Andrew Martinez, Oleg Kitov, Michael Pitt, Carlos Caceras, Taka Kurita, Diaa
Noureldin, Qianzi Zeng, Heiko Hesse, Jiao, Matthias Qian, Aurora Manrique,
Cavit Pakel and Clive Bowsher.
Neil Shephard’s research in financial econometrics continued to flourish.
The returns on financial assets were modelled using volatility models driven
by a Lévy process (see Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard 2002). These are pro-
cesses allowing a continuous component and both large and many small
jumps. The jumps can be estimated by power and bipower variation (see
Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard 2004a) and multivariate features can be esti-
mated by realised covariation (see ibid. 2004b). Shephard was involved in the
creation of the MSc in Financial Econometrics and also in teaching the core
financial economics paper. He attracted funding from the Man hedge fund to
found the Oxford-Man Institute to study quantitative finance, and was its
first Director in 2007–2011. Neil is currently Chair of the Department of
Statistics at Harvard University.
In 2010, Sophocles Mavroeidis returned to a faculty position from Brown
University, working on identification in macroeconomic models. Previously,
he had worked on the problem of weak instruments in forward-looking mod-
els (Mavroeidis 2004, Kleibergen and Mavroeidis 2009). He next considered
the empirical evidence on inflation expectations in the New Keynesian Phillips
curve (Mavroeidis et al. 2014), identification using stability restrictions
(Magnusson and Mavroeidis 2014) and how learning in representative-agent
forward-looking models can generate long memory endogenously (Chevillon
and Mavroeidis 2018). This research was supported by a European Research
Council (ERC) consolidator grant in 2015. Mavroeidis brought the 30th
EC2 conference back to Oxford in 2019 after a long absence since the 4th
EC2 conference hosted by Hendry in 1993.
5.1 Software Developments
Research in econometric computing took a new direction with the develop-

ment of automated software for model selection and detection of outliers and
step shifts. Inspired by Hoover and Perez (1999), Hendry and Krolzig (1999,
2005) developed the PcGets software, later replaced by Autometrics by
Doornik (2008) and accompanied by Gets in R by Pretis et al. (2018a). An

asymptotic theory for outlier detection was initiated by Hendry et al. (2008)
and Johansen and Nielsen (2009). The model selection project continues and
involves a number of other researchers, students, post-docs and faculty,
including Berenguer-Rico, Castle, Jiao and Qian.
Several new teaching courses were introduced, including Quantitative
Economics in 2009 and Environmental Economics and Climate Change for
PPE, and, as mentioned above, an MSc in Financial Economics with a financial
econometrics core course. Research funding matched the change in emphasis to
Economic Forecasting, Modelling, Forecasting and Policy in the Evolving Macro-
economy, Economic Modelling in a Rapidly Changing World, Rebalancing Theory
and Evidence in Macroeconomics, Automatic Tests of Model Specification, Extending
the Boundaries of Econometric Modelling, Our World in Data, New Approaches to
the Identification of Macroeconomic Models and Climate Econometrics.
5.2 Easter Schools
Over the period 2001–2008, Hendry, Nielsen and Shephard organised a

series of annual Easter Schools in econometrics funded by the Royal Economic
Society and ESRC. The Schools had prominent speakers and attracted many
students from across the world:
• Financial Econometrics: Enrique Sentana and Neil Shephard

• Micro-econometrics: Martin Browning and Hidehiko Ichimura
• Linear and Non-linear Non-stationary Time Series: Søren Johansen and
Anders Rahbek
• Financial Econometrics: Torben Andersen, Tim Bollerslev and Nour Medahi
• Causality: David Cox, Nancy Cartwright, David Hendry, Jim Heckman
and Steffen Lauritzen
• Panel Data: Manuel Arellano and Steve Bond
• Model Selection: Kevin Hoover, David Hendry, Benedikt Pötscher and
Halbert White
6 ontributions to Data Provision

C
in the Twenty-First Century
Oxford econometrics has continued its interest in data construction and
organisation. The vast, easily accessed and immensely useful provision in Our
World in Data (see https://ourworldindata.org/) by Max Roser and his team
Figure 1.1 UK GDP reconstructions, 1300–1700
is a major contribution to understanding the evolution of the world. Their

database has curated many thousands of time series and maps from Age
through Antibiotics and Biodiversity to Working Hours, covering economics,
politics, climate, health, gender, sustainability, poverty and inequality, all
beautifully presented graphically.
Recently, Apostolides et al. (2008) have performed the enormous task of
estimating English GDP from 1300−1700, providing an incredibly long run
of historical time series data, shown for what the authors call “GDP1” in
Figure 1.1, pre- and post- their missing data period.3 The downward location
shift following the Black Death starting in 1348 is very marked in the left-
hand panel, as is the relative stagnation through to about 1500, both high-
lighted by using step-indicator saturation (SIS: see Castle et al. 2015). On the
right-hand panel (note the different scales), the strong and relatively constant
absolute growth from around 1550 onwards is equally obvious, and now SIS
picks up the drop in GDP during the English Civil War (1642−1651), and
the boom following its ending, as well as another boom over 1664−1672.
While it may be thought to be anachronistic to create GDP data for a period
where the concept was unknown, the authors’ detailed and extensive archival
research is an important contribution to understanding the past, and builds
on a long Oxford tradition in data curation.
3
For an update and continuous time series, see Broadberry et al. (2015).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
„Wag maar,” sê ek, „Hendrik is mans genoeg vir hom; dis nie die
eerste keer wat hy boks nie. Ek wonder waar hy die kuns aangeleer
het?”
Die geveg word hoe langer hoe doller. Groot Lawaai het tot die
ontdekking gekom dat die enigste kans om te wen in die hanteer van
die sambok lê, en bokspring nou al vinniger om Hendrik. Eindelik
sien laasgenoemde die psigologiese moment. Soos ’n wildekat vlieg
hy vorentoe onder die sambok deur, wat sy kop strykelings raak, gee
sy teenstander ’n geweldige slag met die linkervuis op sy wind, en
toe hy inmekaar sak, gee hy hom die coup de grâce so netjies dat
Dempsey hom die hou sou beny het.
Ongeërg tel hy die sambok op en wag tot Groot Lawaai bykom.
„Kyk hier, jou gemene baster, nou gaan jy eers die pak slae kry
wat jy al lank verdien het. Ek wil hê jy moet ’n slaggie voel hoedat
jou eie sambok slaan. Miskien sal jy dit dan in die vervolg ’n bietjie
minder op die donkies gebruik.” En met hierdie woorde steek
Hendrik los. Die eerste en die twede hou het Groot Lawaai nog
verdra, maar toe spring hy weg en loop netso hard as hy kan al om
die wa en die donkies, en kort op sy hakke is Hendrik, wat al die tyd
onbarmhartig daar op los slaan.
Eindelik kan die boelie nie meer hardloop nie. „Asseblief, Meneer,”
soebat hy, „sowaar, Meneer, ek sal die donkies nooit weer mishandel
nie! Moenie meer vir my slaan nie! Ag, asseblief tog, my baas!”
„Dè, vat jou sambok,” sê Hendrik, en in elke woord was veragting
te lees, „maar die Here help vir jou as jy weer die donkies
mishandel.” En sonder ’n verder woord stap hy na die boom toe, trek
sy baadjie aan, stryk sy hand oor die striem op sy gesig en strek
hom so lank as hy is op sy rug onder die doringboom uit.
„Daardie kêrel se hand wil ek vat, al is hy ook ’n dronklap,” voeg
ek die hoof toe. „Daar steek meer in hom as in ons twee saam!”
En so het ek kennis gemaak met Hendrik Blits.
II.
Ds. Evertse kom op die Toneel.
In ds. Evertse se studeerkamer op Smartendal hang daar ’n

geillumineerde teks aan die muur: „Gered om te dien.” Veral in die
laaste maande het daardie woorde die dominee nooit met rus gelaat
nie. Nou moet die leser nie hiervan wil aflei dat ds. Evertse sy pligte
as predikant verwaarloos het nie. Dit is nie die geval nie. Sy eie
gemeentelede word getrou bearbei, maar dit neem al sy tyd en
kragte in beslag. Sy hart bloei vir die delwers, en hoe langer hoe
meer word dit vir hom duidelik dat sy plig hom Diamantkuil-toe roep.
As ds. Evertse oortuig is dat sy paadjie in ’n seker rigting loop, dan
laat hy hom van niks keer nie. Hy bring die kwessie voor sy
Kerkraad, bepleit die noodsaaklikheid vir die geestelike bearbeiding
van die delwers hartstogtelik en wen sy saak. ’n Locum tenens word
benoem, en die dominee kry verlof om vir vier maande sy tyd en
kragte uitsluitend aan die delwers te wy. ’n Week later was ds.
Evertse op Diamantkuil in ’n tentjie tussen die uitgewekenes, bereid
om te dien.
Sy koms daar is met gemengde gewaarwordinge deur die
delwersbevolking begroet. ’n Klein klompie was waaragtig bly, ’n
groot klomp was heeltemal onverskillig, en ’n hele paar was openlik
boos.
Die delwersgemeenskap is uit die aard van die saak
kosmopolieties. ’n Mens tref daar aan: Jode en Jodegenote,
Kretense en Arabiere, Engelse en Duitsers en wat dies meer sy,
maar verreweg die meeste bestaan uit Afrikaners van alle rang en
stand. Daar is diegenes wat altyd arm was en arm sal doodgaan, en
daar is ander wat eers ryk bedeeld was met aardse goedere en deur
hulle eie toedoen of deur teenspoed alles verloor het.
Die dominee het egter nie gras onder sy voete laat groei nie, en
die delwers, wat baie fyn is om iemand gou na waarde te leer skat,
het hom spoedig liefgekry. Hy was regtig soos een van hulle; nie uit
die hoogte het hy hulle genader nie, maar as iemand wat gered is
om te dien. Niemand word oorgeslaan nie, tot in die vuilste
pondokkie kruip hy in, nie om te preek en te bestraf nie, maar om ’n
woordjie van bemoediging en ’n boodskap van hoop te bring.
In die aand word ’n kort diens gehou. ’n Lantern word aan ’n paal
gebind en omhoog gehou as teken dat die dominee op daardie plek
sou preek. Die eerste week het nog geen dosyn delwers opgedaag
nie, dog die gehoor het altyd meer en meer aangegroei. Die woord
het van mond tot mond gegaan dat ds. Evertse dit wel met die
delwers meen.
Treffend was dit om saans die delwers te sien opkom. Diegenes
wat ’n lantern besit, bring dit saam. Die diens word onder die blote
hemel gehou. Bo die dominee se hoof hang die lantern aan die paal,
en verder word lig verskaf deur die lanterns wat die delwers
saamgebring het.
Die Woord word in alle eenvoud dog met diepe erns gebring, en
indrukwekkend was dit om die gesigte van die toehoorders gade te
slaan. Slegs enkeles spot openlik, die grootste gros luister aandagtig
en eerbiedig. En as die dominee Ges. 7 vs. 2: „Sy troue Vaderoë
sien alles van naby” opgee, dan sing die gehoor dit so hartlik soos ’n
mens dit selde in enige kerk hoor, en as die laaste tone wegsterf oor
die slapende vlaktes, dan voel die delwer dat daar darem nog Een is
wat vir hom sorg. Ook dié onder hulle wat Hom in hulle ellende
gevloek het, verlang terug na die dae toe hulle as kind aan die knie
van ’n vrome moeder hulle gebedjie geprewel het, en begin hulself af
te vra of hulle nie liewers moet terugkeer tot die ou weë nie.
Saterdags het die dominee dit altyd baie moeilik gehad. Op
daardie dag kom die drank-lorrie die delwery ’n besoek bring, en dan
moet meer as een huigesin die volgende Sondag sonder kos gaan,
omdat die vader sy laaste paar sielings aan ’n bottel brandewyn
bestee het. En as dit maar al was! Maar die gruwelike dronktonele
wat daar dan soms afgespeel word, is te vreeslik om te boek te stel.
Aan hierdie hemeltergende euwel behoort onmiddellik deur
wetgewing ’n end gemaak te word. Moet die vrou en kinders dan vir
ewig ly omdat die man ’n bees van hom wil maak, en waarom moet
die brood uit die mond van die onskuldiges gehou word om
gewetenlose drankhandelaars te verryk?
Dit was die Maandagaand na so ’n naweek dat die dominee my
versoek het om op die delwery oor te bly en sy diens by te woon.
„Gister en eergister was dit weer baie kwaai,” sê hy, en hy skud sy
hoof: „die arme Hendrik Blits was weer buite kennis van
Saterdagmiddag af tot van oggend toe. Ag! as ek Hendrik tog net so
ver kon kry om die drank te laat staan, hoe sou ek die goeie God
dank. Hy word beskou as een van die rofste karakters op
Diamantkuil, en tog het ek al baie dingetjies opgemerk wat my
oortuig dat daar meer in hom steek as wat die meeste delwers dink.”
Wis ek dit nie? Daardie koue oggend se voorval met die baster
was my nog helder voor die gees.
Die dominee het daardie aand die gelykenis van die Verlore Seun
vir sy gehoor uit die Afrikaanse bewerking van die Nuwe Testament
voorgelees. Ek het al dikwels in die kerk en in die Sondagskool
opgelet hoedat hierdie verhaal grootmense sowel as kinders
aangryp, maar nog nooit het ek ’n aandagtiger gehoor as toe gesien
nie. Die delwers: man, vrou en kind, het letterlik aan die prediker se
mond gehang en elke woord ingedrink.
„Geliefdes,” roep die prediker aan die end van sy rede, en sy stem
is pleitend, net soos ’n liefhebbende moeder met haar stout seuntjie
sou praat, „geliefdes, net soos die Vader se oog al van ver sy
afgedwaalde seun sien aankom het en hy met ’n hart brandende van
liefde hom tegemoet gesnel en gekus het, netso wag julle hemelse
Vader vir elkeen van julle. Maar dan moet dit nie enkel by goeie
voornemens bly nie. Nee, julle moet opstaan en soos die verlore
seun na Hom teruggaan. Waarom sal julle langer as huurlinge
swynedraf eet, wanneer julle as seuns en erfgename by julle Vader
kan aansit?” Toe word as slotsang gesing: „Komt gij allen, komt tot
Hem, zondaars, komt, wat zou u hindren,” die seën word uitgespreek
en die diens was afgeloop. Een vir een gaan die delwers huis-toe.
Net een bly agter. Hy het so ’n bietjie opsy in die skaduwee gestaan,
asof hy bang was dat iemand hom sou raaksien. Soos Nikodemus
het hy in die nag gekom, omdat hy bevrees was om gesien te word.
Nou tree hy vorentoe en kon ek die verbasing op die dominee se
aangesig lees. „Wel, Hendrik man, ek is waarlik bly om jou ook
vanaand hier te sien!”
„Maar ek was nog elke aand teenwoordig, Dominee, hoewel ek nie
juis my bakkies in die lig wou wys nie,” sê die aangesprokene, wat
niemand anders as Hendrik Blits was nie. „Dominee, mag ek met jou
saamstap na jou tent toe? Of is jy ook bang vir hierdie paaiboelie?”
gaan hy verder.
Ek wou my verwyder, maar op versoek van die dominee en
Hendrik het ek saamgestap.
„Kyk, Dominee,” sê hy toe ons in die tentjie van die predikant sit,
„daardie preek van jou het my vanaand laat besluit dat ek ook wil
teruggaan na my aardse vader. Ek wil graag met die Hemelse ook
vrede maak, maar kan tog nie voordat ek nie eers met my natuurlike
vader versoen is nie. Ek is moeg vir varkkos. Sal jy vir my help?”
„Alte seker,” sê die dominee op so ’n opgewekte en
bemoedigende toon, dat ek by myself dink die saak is alreeds
halfgewen.
„Maar, Dominee, ek is ’n duiwel as ek drank ruik, en het u al
vergeet hoedat ek u nou die dag nog beledig het?” gaan Hendrik
voort.
„Vergeet?” herhaal die dominee sag, „nee, maar vergewe wel. Ek
wis dat dit die drank was wat gepraat het en nie Hendrik nie.”
In Hendrik se oog blink warempel ’n traan. Dit was lank laas dat
iemand so vriendelik met hom gepraat het.
„En kyk hier Hendrik man,” herneem die dominee, „jy kom van
vanaand af hier by my in die tent woon. Ek neem g’n weiering aan
nie. Jy het na my toe gekom om hulp, en met Gods genade gaan ek
jou help. Maar vertel my eers hoedat jy hier op die delwerye te lande
gekom het.”
III.
Hendrik vertel sy Lewensgeskiedenis.
Dis ’n lang storie, Dominee, en vir my nie eintlik plesierig om te
vertel nie, maar ek sal dit so kort en saaklik doen as ek kan. My
ouers lewe nog, woon in die Westlike Provinsie en is ryk. Ek is die
enigste seun, maar daar is nog twee dogters ook in die lewe. My
eerste onderrig het ek in Pêrel ontvang, en vandaar is ek na die
Kaapse Uniwersiteit toe, waar ek my graad in die wetenskappe
behaal het. My vader wou hê ek moes kom boer en die plaas bestier,
maar met my het dit gegaan soos met baie ander boerseuns. As ons
klaar geleer het, dan kan ons dit eenvoudig op ’n plaas nie uithou
nie. Jy is ’n dominee en hierdie vriend ’n onderwysman, maar kan
julle dan niks daaraan doen om ons onderwysstelsel so te herskep
dat dit meer uit die volk en vir die volk is nie? Kyk wat dit van my
gemaak het. En al wil ek myself en my toestand nie hierdeur
verskoon nie, tog beweer ek dat ’n kind vandag so opgevoed word
dat hy aan die plaaslewe hoog die land het as hy klaar is. ’n Mens
sou sweer dat elke seun ’n klerk of onderwyser of dokter of so iets
gaan word en elke meisie ’n onderwyseres of tikster. Nee, ons
stelsel mag vir die buiteland deug, maar vir Suid-Afrika is dit
hopeloos verkeerd.
Ek wou vir dokter in die medisyne gaan studeer, en hoewel teen
sy sin, het my vader eindelik ingewillig. ’n Maand daarna was alles in
orde en het ek na Londen vertrek om my studies voort te sit. Die
eerste jaar het dit goed gegaan en die twede ook, maar toe het ek in
slegte geselskap verval. Ek het naamlik die vriendskap verwerf van
’n Amerikaanse student wie se vader ’n miljoenêr was en wat
derhalwe nooit gebrek aan geld gehad het nie. Tot dusver het ek
altyd maklik uitgekom met die toelae wat my vader my maandeliks
gestuur het; ek het selfs geld oorgehou, want my vader het my rojaal
behandel. Maar nou het ’n maand se geld my skaars ’n week
geduur. Ek het deur my vriend in High Society gekom, en die gevolg
was dat ek skuld begin maak het. As ek hierby nog vermeld dat ek ’n
eersteklas voetbalspeler en die beste bokser op die Uniwersiteit
was, dan sal u wel kan verstaan dat ek dikwels uitgevra is, aan baie
bankette en danse deelgeneem, en later ’n smaak vir sterk drank
aangekweek het.
Maar so kon dit nie voortduur nie; my skuldeisers het my begin te
dreig, en my vader moes opdok. Hy het betaal, maar my onmiddellik
gebied om huis-toe te kom.
’n Maand later was ek in Tafelbaai. Aan boord skip het ek vir
oulaas nog die groot meneer gespeel, en toe ek by die Kaap kom,
was my lyf lekker. Ek het nooit my ouers by die doks verwag nie,
anders sou ek my miskien nog ’n bietjie bedwing het, maar berou
kom altyd te laat. Op pad huis-toe het my moeder elke slag ’n traan
uit haar oë gevee, en my vader was woedend.
„Toe, gaan slaap eers jou roes af,” sê hy by ons tuiskoms, „en dan
sal ons môre mekaar onder vier oë spreek. Jy behoort jou te skaam
om jou moeder en my soveel verdriet aan te doen.”
Die volgende môre het my vader my in sy kantoortjie geroep en
vreeslik geroskam. Ek het dit alles verdien, Dominee, maar as my
vader net ’n bietjie meer simpatiek was ...
„As ’n gewone dagloner sal jy nou moet werk, en as jy binne die
eerste twee jaar goedmaak, sal ek jou weer as my seun behandel.
Maar die eerste die beste keer wat jy ’n mistrap doen, jaag ek jou
soos ’n kaffer van my plaas af weg!”
Maar my moeder en my susters het my alles vergewe, en om hulle
nooit weer leed aan te doen nie, het ek my ernstig voorgeneem om
’n nuwe blaadjie om te slaan.
Dit het egter geblyk dat die duiwel nie so gemaklik van die syne
afstand doen nie. ’n Gereelde kuiergas van my suster was ’n vent
wat ek somar van die eerste dag af aan nie kon veel nie. By my
vader was hy egter baie gewild, hoewel my moeder en my oudste
suster hom nie juis uit liefde om die nek geval het nie. Wat my nog
meer vererg het, was die feit dat hy my kompleet nes ’n bediende in
die huis behandel het. Ons maat het hom verbeel dat hy verbasend
musikaal was, en hy het selfs musieklesse gegee, maar my opienie
was dat die Muse haar hoof uit skaamte laat hang het sodra hy sy
mond oopmaak om te sing.
Wel, een aand toe almal al moeg was van sy geskree en daar ’n
oomblikkie stilte gekom het, vra ek verlof om die Ave Maria van
Schubert op die gramafoon te speel. Dit was ’n plaat van Heifitz—op
die oomblik, soos u wellig weet, een van die grootste vioolspelers in
die wêreld. Ek het hom self in Londen gehoor, Dominee, en hy is in
een woord wonderlik.
Toe die plaat afgeloop was, sê ons musikale vriend: „Ons het nou
genoeg van sulke rubbish gehad, laat ons nou weer musiek maak!”
met die nadruk op musiek. Ek moes nou òf praat òf ontplof. „Jou
verwaande esel,” bars ek los, „as jy ook maar ’n greintjie verstand
had, dan...”
„Hendrik,” val my vader my in die rede, „gedra vir jou of verlaat die
kamer.”
Dominee, ek het die kamer verlaat en so ampertjies die plaas ook.
Maar my moeder, wat my na my kamer gevolg het, het so mooi
gepraat dat ek om haar ontwil aangebly het. Van dié tyd af het ek die
kuiergas vermy.
Vir ’n paar maande het dit goed gegaan en het ek die voorvalletjie
al amper vergeet, toe daar een aand ’n konsert op X was, waar die
vryer ook sou sing. Die hele famielie sou dorp-toe gaan vir die
konsert, en ek moes die moter drywe.
Soos die toeval dit wou hê, moes ek juis daardie aand ’n ou kennis
uit Londen ontmoet wat met die pouse by my aandring om saam met
hom iets te gaan drink. Hoe ek ook al teëpraat, hy wou g’n weiering
aanneem nie, en onder die verstandhouding dat ek net iets ligs sou
gebruik, gaan ek uiteindelik saam.
Die bar was vol konsertgangers, waaronder ook ons musikale
vriend. Hy het my binnekoms nie opgemerk nie. Om hom staan ’n
klompie van sy drinkbroers, en elke keer skree hulle dit uit van die
lag.
„Ou Hendrik,” sê hy tot vermaak van sy maats, „doen sy uiterste
om daardie dogter van hom aan my af te smeer, en sy ouvrou is
eintlik lastig. Sy seun, soos julle weet, is somar ’n sujet en ’n
niksnuts, en sy dogters van dié soort wat om enige jongkêrel se nek
sal val.”
„Wat sê jy daar?” vra ek terwyl ek vorentoe stap.
„Dè, jou plaashotnot!” skree hy en hy gooi sy glasie whiskey in my
gesig, terwyl sy maats dit uitgil van hilariteit.
Dis seker onnodig vir my om te vertel dat hy na die pouse nie
verder kon deelneem aan die konsert nie, of dat hy die volgende dag
nog nie sy oë kon oopmaak nie.
Soos ’n vuurtjie in die lang gras het die nuus versprei dat ek ons
kuiergas ’n pak slae in die bar toegedien het, en ek het rede om te
glo dat die meeste inwoners van X baie bly daaroor was. Maar my
vader was ’n ander sienswyse toegedaan. Hy wou eenvoudig na g’n
uitleg luister nie en wou g’n rede verstaan nie.
„Jy stink weer na die vervloekte drank,” snou hy my toe. „Maak dat
jy vir ewig uit my gesig wegkom. ’n Dronklap van ’n seun wat soos ’n
straatboef in kantiene baklei, wil ek nie erken nie. Trap!”
Ek het wel na drank geruik, maar dit was die vryerman se whiskey
wat hy op my uitgesmyt het; self het ek niks gedrink nie. My moeder
wou nog as middelaar tussenbei kom, maar ook sy word beveel om
stil te bly. Toe verloor ek my kop en het my vader dinge toegevoeg
wat onbetaamlik was vir ’n seun. Die volgende dag het ek van die
plaas af vertrek en rondgeswerwe totdat ek hier aangeland het.
„Die drank moes my die verlede laat vergeet, en nou is ek sy slaaf.
Kan jy my regtig help, Dominee?” en Hendrik se stem was diep
ernstig.
„Ja, Hendrik, met die hulp van Bo sal ek jou help,” sê die dominee
op so ’n toon dat die dieps-gesonkenste moed sou geskep het.
„Maar eers moet ons jou onder die drankduiwel se mag uitkry, en
daarom gaan jy van nou af aan as my broer by my in die tent bly.”
In stilte gee ek die dominee en Hendrik ’n handdruk en vertrek.
„Dis waar,” peins ek op die pad huis-toe, „party mense moet deur
dieper waters gaan as ander.”
IV.
’n Epidemie van Maagkoors en Slot.
Die eerste somerreëns het geval, en die vaal vlaktes het al so ’n
ligte groen skynsel begin te wys. Die delwer se waterrekening, wat
nog al ’n aansienlike sommetjie elke maand bedra, sal nou weer
aanmerklik minder wees, want elke uitgewerkte kleim het vol
gereent.
Nou is dit juis die tyd van die jaar wat ’n mens nie te versigtig kan
wees met betrekking tot jou drinkwater nie, want byna elke
dammetjie staande water is besmet. Maar die delwer dink selde
daaraan om sy water te kook; hy het nie die tyd en die geleentheid
daarvoor nie, en brandhout is ’n baie skaars artiekel op die diekens.
Die distriksdokter het sy hoof bedenklik geskud. Hy was ’n dag of
wat gelede ingeroep na drie siekes in een tent, en sy diagnose in
ieder geval was gewees: maagkoors.
„As daar nie ’n groot verbetering aangebring word wat sanitasie en
drinkwater betref nie, dan gaan julle ’n epidemie van maagkoors hier
op die delwerye hê,” het hy by daardie geleentheid met nadruk aan
die delwerskomitee gesê.
Maar hoe op aarde gaan jy behoorlike gesondheidsmaatreëls
neem in so ’n gemeenskap? En waar gaan jy skoon drinkwater kry
vir vier- of vyfduisend mense?
Die delwerskomitee het wel sy bes gedoen, maar die epidemie het
tog uitgebreek. Nou was dit werklik ’n naarheid op Diamantkuil. Hele
huisgesinne lê plat aan die gevreesde siekte, en daar is g’n hospitaal
waarin hulle kan verpleeg word nie. Die twee dokters van
Smartendal het gedoen wat hulle kon, maar wat vermag twee
geneeshere in so ’n geval?
Soos ’n dienende engel het ds. Evertse van tent tot tent en
pondokkie tot pondokkie gegaan. Hier het hy enkel ’n gebed gedoen,
daar het hy verpleeg, elders het hy bestraf, en weer op ’n ander plek
het hy dooies die laaste eer bewys en help begrawe. Hy was
onvermoeid en met bo-menslike krag het hy volgehou.
En Hendrik Blits?—Waar die dominee nie meer kon werk nie, het
hy gaan help en sy kennis van medisyne het hom goed te stade
gekom. G’n hut of krot was vir hom te vuil om te besoek nie; oral het
hy ingekruip om sy dienste aan te bied. Toe die dominee hom
waarsku om homself ’n bietjie meer in ag te neem, was sy enigste
opmerking: „Ek het baie verlore kanse om in te haal!”
Onder die krankes was onder meer ook Groot Lawaai. Die
dominee kon niemand kry om hom te gaan verpleeg nie. Die mense
was bang vir hom, en party delwers het openlik gesê dat hul hoop hy
sou vrek.
„Hendrik,” sê ds. Evertse een aand, „ek kom nou net van Groot
Lawaai af. Hy is allerellendigs en het niemand om hom te verpleeg
nie. Ek het gewonder of jy miskien sou wil gaan?” En hy kyk hom
vas in sy oë. Hendrik laat sy hand oor die litteken op sy gesig gly, en
vir ’n oomblik blits sy oë. Op die dominee se aangesig is
verleentheid duidelik leesbaar. Hendrik merk dit op en met ’n glimlag
sê hy: „Ek sal gaan, Dominee, ek sal gaan. Hy sal vir my ook beter
luister as vir enig iemand anders.”
Die epidemie word nou so kwaai dat dit eindelik die aandag van
die outoriteite trek. Verpleegsters word afgestuur na die delwerye, ’n
paar dokters kom saam, en drie of vier groot markeetente word as
tydelike hospitale ingerig. Nou gaan dit beter, en kon die dominee en
Hendrik sowel as die ander helpers ’n bietjie asem skep. En dit was
hoog tyd, want die dominee was klaar, en Hendrik self het die laaste
paar dae al geweet dat hy die siekte onder lede het.
„Ai! Dominee,” sug hy toe Groot Lawaai buite gevaar was, „nou
moet ons twee darem ’n bietjie gaan rus. Wat myself betref, ek voel
of ek vir altyd kan gaan slaap!”
Die predikant skrik toe hy Hendrik se doods-bleek gelaat sien en
die koorsgloed in sy oë. Hy gryp sy hand, voel sy pols, en daar was
’n moeder se besorgdheid in sy stem toe hy sê: „Kom, Hendrik, nou
moet jy gaan rus.”
Die volgende dag was Hendrik deurmekaar.
„Hy het te lank gewag voordat hy bed-toe gegaan het,” was die
uitspraak van die dokter, „en sy gestel is so afgesloop dat ek die
ergste vrees.”
In die hospitaal-tent het hulle vir Hendrik alles so gerieflik moontlik
ingerig, en die verpleegsters het gedoen wat hulle kon vir hierdie
pasjent. Aandoenlik was dit om te sien hoedat delwers wat hom
vroeër kwaadgesind was, nou met ontroerde gesigte elke môre en
aand na sy toestand kom verneem, en die getrouste onder hulle was
Groot Lawaai, die baster.
„As hy famieliebetrekkings het wat hom graag voor sy dood wil
sien,” het die dokter aan die dominee gesê, „dan moet u hulle
ontbied. Hy sal dit nie lank meer maak nie. Lewe sy ouers nog
miskien?”
„Ja, Dokter.”
„Nou laat hulle seker kom. Hendrik vra al na sy vader vir die laaste
week. Hy hou aan hy wil hom met sy vader versoen, en dis maar die
beste om hom sy sin te gee,” sê die dokter.
’n Paar dae later staan sy ouers om sy bed. Hendrik is by sy

positiewe, maar uiters swak. Hy ken hulle, en ’n tevrede glimlag
speel om sy mond. Sy vader vat sy een uitgeteerde hand in syne, en
sy moeder die ander een in hare. Op oom Hendrik se gesig staan
vaderlike trots geskrywe, want die dominee het hom en sy vrou
reeds kortliks van Hendrik se reformasie en sy selfopofferende
liefde-arbeid vertel. Maar die moeder se oë is vol trane, en in haar
hart die volheid van liefde wat ’n moeder alleen beskore is.
„Ek het jou alles vergewe, my kind, en my hart brand van
verlangste om jou as seun in my huis terug te verwelkom,” fluister
die vader in sy oor. Hendrik knik nouliks sigbaar met sy hoof, en toe
sy moeder hom saggies op sy voorhoof soen, rol daar ’n traan oor sy
wange.
„Dis nou genoeg opwinding vir vandag,” en die dokter stap
vorentoe. „Hy is nog nie dood nie, en so lank soos daar lewe is, is
daar hoop op herstel.”
Ons sal nie die dae en nagte van hoop en teleurstelling, van angs
en benoudheid beskrywe nie. Dit het lank geduur, en meer as eens
het sy lewe aan ’n draadjie gehang, maar eindelik het die siekte ’n
gunstige wending geneem en het Hendrik tog gesond geword.
„Uit die dood teruggekeer,” het die dokter verklaar, en hy was reg
ook. Niemand behalwe die skrywer weet watter worsteling in die
gebed die dominee in sy tent deurgemaak het nie.
Dis g’n oordrywing as ek sê dat daar uit vyfduisend harte op
Diamantkuil ’n sug van dank na Bo geslaak is vir Hendrik se herstel
nie. En toe die dominee kort voor sy vertrek ’n dankdag bepaal,
omdat die epidemie verby was, het elke man, vrou en kind wat
daartoe in staat was, opgekom. Opmerklik was dit hoe baiekeer
Hendrik se naam in die dankgebede voorgekom het.
Dominee Evertse is terug in sy pastorie op Smartendal, en
Hendrik het saam met sy ouers huis-toe vertrek, dog nie om te gaan
boer nie. Hy het teruggegaan Uniwersiteit-toe, het sy mediese
studies voltooi en is vandag een van die knapste geneeshere in
Suid-Afrika. Die armes en veral die delwersbevolking geniet sy
besondere aandag, en die skrywer ag dit ’n besondere eer om onder
sy vriende getel te word.
OOM PIET LEGRANSIE.
„Ja, neef; drie jaar se droogte, drie jaar se sprinkane, drie jaar se
misoeste en daardie borgstaan vir Freek Willemse het vir my
gerinneweer.”
Oom Piet Legransie was eers ’n welgestelde boer gewees en
seker een van die mees gasvrye in Westelike Transvaal. Meer as
een genoeglike aand het ek by oom Piet deurgebring as ek moeg
was van ’n hele dag se inspeksie en die lus my ontbreek het om nog
dieselfde dag verder te ry. Ek wis dat ek altyd welkom was op
Welgevonde. Hierdie goeie oom en sy vrou het die slag verstaan om
iemand by hulle tuis te laat voel. Daar was niks van die onnodige
rondvallery en ekskuusmakery wat ’n mens net laat voel dat jy tot
oorlas is nie. Jy was vry om te doen wat jy wil, en die oubaas het die
kuns meesterlik verstaan om die onderwerp van die gesprek so te
kies dat almal kon saampraat en sy gas nie nodig het om alleen die
diskussie aan die gang te hou nie.
Verlede jaar het ek nog op Welgevonde vernag, en nou, elf
maande later, ontmoet ek vir oom Piet toevallig op Kreepoort, een
van die jongs-geproklameerde delwerye.
„Maar hoekom het Oom dan nie vir my van Oom se moeilikhede
vertel toe ek laas by Oom was nie? Ons is mos tog ou vriende, en
moontlik kon ons saam ’n plan gemaak het. Of miskien kon ek vir
Oom met geld gehelp het!”
„My goeie neef, wat sou dit gebaat het? En waarom sou ek jou
ook in die ongeluk saamgesleep het? Nee, neef, Piet Legransie het
darem nog ’n bietjie selfrespek oorgehou.”
Om die gesprek ’n ander wending te gee vra ek nou: „En betaal
die delwery-besigheid nogal?”
„Betaal? vra jy, neef. My liewe vriend, jy is tog al lank genoeg in
Smartendal om te weet hoe dit met die meeste delwers gesteld is.
Kyk, neef, ek sou nooit my toevlug hiernatoe geneem het nie, as ek
kans gesien het om op ’n ander manier my kos te verdien nie; maar
ek is nie meer jonk nie en het nie kans gesien om êrens anders ’n
heenkome te soek nie. Dit gaan hel hier, neef; hel, sê ek.”
Dit was snaaks om hierdie woord uit oom Piet se mond te
verneem. Gewoonlik was hy besonder kies wat sy taal betref, en
onder normale omstandighede buitengewoon gesteld op sy uiterlik.
Maar nou lyk die oubaas net soos die meeste delwers: bruin van die
stof, bruin gebrand en ongewas, en hy het nie juis geskroom om te
swets nie.
„Maar Oom, as dit hel gaan, waarom bly Oom dan op die
delwerye?”
„En waar moet ek anders heen? Na die dorp, om daar rond te
slenter en heeldag by die pastorie om aalmoes aan te klop? Of na
die Dam om daar onder ’n voorman te werk? Ek, wat nog altyd my
eie baas was, sal onder ’n ander gaan buk! So nooit as te nimmer
nie! Nee, neef, wragtag nooit nie! Ek vergaan soms byna van die
honger, maar hier is ek tog my eie baas. My kleim is wel klein, maar
hier is ek baas!” herhaal die ou.
„En hoelank is Oom al hier op Kreepoort?”
„Môre ag maande.”
„Al iets gekry?”
„Net eenmaal ’n twee-carat, waarvoor ek £20 gekry het, en laas
week ’n carat wat gespot was en net £3 gefetch het,” antwoord oom
Piet in die taal wat alle delwers eie is.
„En hoe lewe Oom dan?”
„Ek lewe nie, man! Ek bars; ja, op my oudag bars ek! Vir die laaste
drie maande eet ek aldag mieliepap, en dit sonder melk of suiker, en
ons koffie is al meer as ses weke gelede gedaan. Ek het al vergeet
hoedat vleis en brood smaak. Neef,—en hier laat oom Piet sy stem
sak,—neef, as dit nie vir my vrou was nie, dan bring ek myself om
die lewe!”
„Maar Oom, is tant Lenie dan ook hier? Ek sou haar baie graag wil
besoek en ’n handdruk gee.”
„Nou stap dan saam.”
Ons vleg ons pad deur uitgewerkte kleims en oor hope dooie
grond en gruis, tussen pondokkies van sink en streepsakke deur, tot
oom Piet eindelik voor ’n krot stilstaan wat nog omtrent die
armoedigste is wat ek ooit gesien het.
„Kruip maar in, neef,” sê hy.
Binne voor ’n tafeltjie sit tant Lenie. Ek sou haar nooit herken het
nie. Uitgeteer en spierwit, ’n toonbeeld van ly en swaarkry.
„Dag, tant Lenie, en hoe....” maar verder kon ek dit nie bring nie;
daar was ’n knop in my keel wat ek nie kon afsluk nie. En toe tant
Lenie haar oë op my rig, moes ek al my wilskrag in beoefening bring
om nie soos ’n kind my te gedra nie. O! die weemoed en die wêreld
van geduldig ly en hartseer wat uit daardie oë spreek!
„Dag, neef. Ek is spyt dat ek jou nie kan welkom heet soos in die
goeie dae van Welgevonde nie; maar soos jy sien, het ons dit nie
alte breed nie,” met ’n gedwonge glimlag. „Ek word die lewe hier
nogal op ’n manier gewoon, maar my ou man kan hom maar nie na
hierdie omstandighede skik nie.”
Geen sug van ontevredenheid nie; geen sweem van murmurering
nie; geen woord van verwyt aan haar man nie, wat teen haar raad en
sin vir Freek Willemse destyds gaan borg teken het. Dis alte waar,
die adel van die siel blink des te skoner uit onder teenspoed. En tant
Lenie was van kinds af aan die beste gewoon gewees.
Ek het nie alte lank vertoef nie; my gemoed was te vol; ek kon nie
vandag met die oumense gesels nie. Al die tyd wat ek daar was, het
net die een gedagte my besig gehou: wat kan ek doen om die goeie
mense uit hulle ellende te help?
„Nou ja, dag tant Lenie. Ek hoop die Here sal uitkoms gee! Dag,
oom Piet!”
Tant Lenie stamel ’n dankie uit, maar oom Piet sê: „Wag, neef, ek
stap saam tot by jou moter.”
Onder die loop bars hy uit: „Kyk, ons moet mekaar goed verstaan.
Jy het ons nou in hierdie toestand aangetref, maar onthou dat nòg
tant Lenie nòg ek van enige persoon ter wêreld aalmoes sal
ontvang, en van liefdadigheid wil ons nie lewe nie, gehoor! En wat jy
daar sê van die Here, neef, en uitkoms, is pure bog. Ek glo nie die
Godheid bekommer Hom in die minste oor ons nie!”
„Maar Oom wil tog nie sê dat al die jare van huisgodsdiens en
gebed en kerkdiens alles skyn was nie? Oom was dan tot twee jaar
gelede nog ouderling van Smartendal se kerk!”
„Dis waar, neef, dis waar, maar toe het ek nie deurgemaak en
geweet wat ek nou weet nie. Toe het alles voorspoedig gegaan en
het die hele affêre ’n sweem van waarheid en wesenlikheid gedra,
om nie eers van fatsoenlikheid te praat nie. Ons hele
godsdiensgedoente pas pragtig vir ryk en fatsoenlike mense, maar in
die kerk is daar nie plek vir my en my gelykes nie. Sit daar een
werklike arm man in die ouderlings- of diakensbanke? Ek glo nie dat
God so ’n danige liefdevolle Wese is nie, dè!” ... En nou raak oom
Piet sulke profane dinge kwyt dat ek dit liewer nie sal te boek stel
nie.
„Maar, Oom, kyk hoe dit met Job gegaan het! Hoe die Here hom
uitgehelp en...”
„Nonsens, neef,” val die ouman my vererg in die rede, „alles
blooming nonsens. Wat het ek vir die Here gemaak dat Hy my nou
op my oudag hier op die delwerye moet laat vergaan van ellende en
armoede? As Hy dan tog vir my wil vernietig, waarom slaan Hy my
dan nie somar op die plek dood nie? Liefdevol? Ek sal wragtie my
hond nie so laat ly nie. En dan kom jy ook nog met jou vroom
praatjies aangeloop! Ek herhaal, neef, dus alles pure bog en
nonsens. As daar ’n Here is, dan gee Hy nie ’n dem vir ons om nie
en kan dit hom weinig skeel wat van ons word.”
„Maar Oom, is dit nie ’n bietjie onbillik om die hele
godsdienskwessie as nonsens te bestempel eenvoudig omdat die
teenspoed en onheile Oom so getref het nie? Oom was mos altyd
baie regverdig in Oom se oordeel, en....”
„Regverdig! billik!” val hy my in die rede. „Asof daar so iets
bestaan. Kyk vir Freek Willemse, wat my so in die verderf gestort
het, hoe goed doen hy vandag. Ek weet nie wanneer hy laas ’n blink
geloop het nie. Almal weet hy is ’n skelm van die eerste water; dat
hy diamante van die kaffers koop, en tog word hy nooit getrep nie.
En dan daardie Sieriër Gias! Hy lieg en bedrieg en verkoop ontwettig
drank aan die kaffers en hy ry in ’n duiwelse mooi moter rond. En
daar is Jim ... maar wat sal ek hulle nou algar opnoem; daar is nog
dosyne van hierdie kalieber. Hoekom straf die regverdige God nie vir
hulle nie? Waarom moet Hy nou juis vir my uitsoek?....”
Hier breek die oubaas se woordevloed so effentjies af. „Ja, dat Hy
vir my opdreun, kan ek nog verstaan, maar watter kwaad het my
vrou ooit vir Hom gedoen dat sy so swaar moet kry?” Hier breek oom
Piet se stem en swyg hy skielik.
„Dag, oom Piet,” en ek vat my ou vriend se hand. „Ek veroordeel
Oom nie; ek kan my ook beswaarlik in Oom se toestand indink. Maar
ter wille van tant Lenie sal ek darem, as ek in Oom se plek was, my
oordeel oor die Voorsienigheid ’n bietjie matig. Miskien sal Oom nog
later ondervind: „Want die Hy liefhet, kasty Hy.”
Eers was dit my plan om somar reguit dorp-toe te ry, maar opeens
skiet die gedagte my te binne dat dit nie kwaad kan doen as ek
Freek Willemse ’n besoekie gaan bring nie.
Hierdie tiepe van man is glad nie onbekend op die delwerye nie.
Gewoonlik tref ’n mens hom aan in rybroek en kamaste, en op sy
aangesig is al die laer hartstogte te lees, terwyl sy oë beslis weier
om dié van ’n ander te ontmoet.
Freek Willemse staan voor sy biljartkamer toe ek daar stilhou. Hy
was nie slegs delwer nie, maar het ook ’n kafè en ’n biljartkamer
daarop nagehou.
„Mag ek jou ’n oomblikkie alleen spreek?” vra ek beleefd.
„En wat wil jy van my hê?” was die antwoord op ’n taamlike
onbeskofte manier.
„As jy my die kans wil gee om alleen met jou te praat, dan sal ek
jou nuuskierigheid gou genoeg bevredig,” sê ek weer. „Kom sit hier
op die kar langs my, dan kan ons ongestoord gesels.”
Die vent se hele houding was dié van ’n roofdier. Hy loop nie, hy
sluip; hy kyk nie voor hom nie, hy loer rond; hy praat nie, hy blaf of
hy knor.
Eindelik kom hy nader en klim op die moter, maar kom nie voor by
my sit nie. Hy plak hom agter in die kar neer en so naby die deurtjie
as moontlik, terwyl sy een been by die oop deurtjie uithang.
„Toe, roer nou jou bek en wees baie haastig, want my masien loop
en ek wil gaan kyk of die kaffers nie verneuk nie!”
„Nou ja, Willemse, ek het vir jou kom besoek om te hoor wat jou
plan is met daardie £1500 wat jy vir oom Piet Legransie skuld. Dit lyk
aan alles of jy baie geld maak, en die oubaas en sy vrou vergaan
van ellende. Jy sal seker graag nou vir hom iets wil doen, aangesien
dit aan jou te wyte is dat hy vandag uit sy grond geraak en alles
verloor het.”
„En wat die hel gaan dit jou aan? As dit die oorsaak van jou
besoek is, dan hoe gouer jy trap hoe heilsamer dit vir jou bas sal
wees!” En hy maak aanstalte om af te klim.
„Wag ’n bietjie, ou vriend,” sê ek sonder om my aan sy taal te
steur, „wag ’n bietjie. Moenie alte haastig wees nie, anders kan jy
maklik jou bas in gevaar bring!” En hier wend ek ’n bietjie bluf aan.
„Of jy sal jou skuld by oom Piet vereffen, òf ek gaan nou aan die
speurders vertel wat ek weet!”
Ek wis eintlik niks definitiefs nie, maar kon sien die skoot was
raak. Die gewone man sou waarskynlik niks gemerk het nie, maar ek
het die krampagtige inkrimp van sy ooglede raakgesien. Sy ogies
word nou al nouer.
„En wat weet jy dan so danig?” vra hy terwyl al sy botande wys.
Hy praat nou al in ’n heel ander toon as van te vore.
„Dis my saak, Willemse, maar dis die vraag of oom Piet sal
tevrede wees om sy mond te hou. Hy weet nog heelwat meer as wat
ek gehoor het.”
Die vent se hele houding het nou ’n verbasende metamorfose
ondergaan. Hy was nou nie langer die blufferige, onbeskofte meneer
van flussies nie; hy was nou die onderdanigheid self.
„Nou ja, hoe sal dit wees as ek vir oom Piet £10 in die maand
afbetaal?” vra hy.
„Kyk, dis vir oom Piet om te besluit. Ek gee aan die hand dat jy die
oubaas vanmiddag nog gaan besoek om met homself reëlinge te
tref. Maar maak gou; môre kan dit miskien te laat wees.” En met
hierdie woorde druk ek die selfaansitter van my kar as teken vir
Willemse dat die onderhoud afgeloop was.
II.
’n Paar maande later het my werk my weer op Kreepoort gebring.
In die loop van die agtermiddag het ek vir oom Piet gaan besoek. Tot
my aangename verrassing was hy nie in sy ou krotjie te vinde nie.
Na ondersoek blyk dit dat die oubaas nou in Freek Willemse se
huisie woon.
Toe ek voor die deur stilhou, staan oom Piet op die stoep.
„Dag, neef,” roep hy, en sy stem klink al amper weer net soos
vanselewe.
„Dag, Oom, en hoe het Oom dan nou in hierdie huis te lande
gekom?”
„Ou neef, dis ’n lang storie. Klim af, kom binne, drink ’n lekker
koppie koffie en dan kan ons gesels.”
Ek het my nie tweekeer laat nooi nie. Ons het skaars gesit of tant
Lenie, wat nou ook weer goed ’n tien jaar jonger lyk, bring twee
geurige koppies koffie binne. Op haar gesig was duidelik te lees dat
daar ’n radikale verandering in die lewe van die twee oumense
plaasgevind het.
Na ’n rukkie begin oom Piet:
„Na jou vertrek twee maande gelede het ek werklik nie die moed
gehad om volgens gewoonte na my pondokkie terug te gaan nie.

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The Palgrave Companion To Oxford Economics 1St Edition Robert A Cord Editor Ebook Full Chapter

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The Palgrave Companion to Oxford

Economics 1st Edition Robert A. Cord

Edited by Robert A. Cord

ISBN 978-3-030-58470-2 ISBN 978-3-030-58471-9 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Mim Friday / Alamy Stock Photo

Part I Themes in Oxford Economics 1

1 Oxford’s Contributions to Econometrics 3

2 Development Economics at Oxford, 1950–2020 29

3 Oxford’s Contributions to Industrial Economics

4 Economic History at Oxford, 1860–2020101

5 PPE and Oxford Economics131

6 The Oxford Institute of Statistics, 1935–1962147

Part II Some Oxford Economists 161

7 Nassau Senior (1790–1864)163

8 William Forster Lloyd (1794–1852)195

9 Bonamy Price (1807–1888)207

10 Thorold Rogers (1823–1890)235

11 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926)257

12 David Hutchison Macgregor (1877–1953)283

13 Roy F. Harrod (1900–1978)309

14 Robert Lowe Hall (1901–1988)331

15 Thomas Balogh (1905–1985)347

16 Colin Clark (1905–1989)371

17 P.W.S. Andrews (1914–1971)395

18 Hrothgar John Habakkuk (1915–2002)417

19 David Worswick (1916–2001)441

20 Ian Little (1918–2012)471

21 W.M. Gorman (1923–2003)503

22 W. Max Corden (1927–)521

23 Derek Robinson (1932–2014)545

24 David F. Hendry (1944–)563

25 Avner Offer (1944–)623

26 John Muellbauer (1944–)645

27 Paul Collier (1949–)673

28 Anthony J. Venables (1953–)689

29 Paul David Klemperer (1956–)711

30 John Vickers (1958–)735

D. F. Hendry (*) • B. Nielsen

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 3

Given the relatively recent definition of econometrics, and its subsequent

2  arly Days: Seventeenth–Nineteenth

One of the earliest records of advances in economics related to statistics, later

2.2 Florence Nightingale

In his history of Oxford statistics written to celebrate the 25th anniversary of

Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of modern nursing, following her experiences

Nevertheless, the Department of Statistics at Oxford now has a Florence

2.3 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

3 Econometrics at Oxford, 1900–1980

Colin Clark is the next important econometrician at Oxford. Clark compiled

Clark is credited with inventing the concept of “gross national product”

3.2 Oxford Institute of Statistics

3.3 James Meade

but switched to Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), securing an

3.4 Martin Feldstein

3.5 Grayham Ernest Mizon

Grayham Mizon was the RTZ Research Fellow at St Catherine’s College,

before returning to LSE (see Mizon 1974, 1977). He remained a long-term

3.6 Alan Brown

3.7 Other Faculty

4 Oxford Econometrics, 1980–2000

4.1 Nuffield College

Somewhat earlier, Nuffield College had been founded in 1937 as a graduate

Neil Ericsson joined Nuffield from LSE in 1982 as a Research Officer on

Part I Themes in Oxford Economics 1

1 Oxford’s Contributions to Econometrics 3

2 Development Economics at Oxford, 1950–2020 29

3 Oxford’s Contributions to Industrial Economics

4 Economic History at Oxford, 1860–2020101

5 PPE and Oxford Economics131

6 The Oxford Institute of Statistics, 1935–1962147

Part II Some Oxford Economists 161

7 Nassau Senior (1790–1864)163

8 William Forster Lloyd (1794–1852)195

9 Bonamy Price (1807–1888)207

10 Thorold Rogers (1823–1890)235

11 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926)257

12 David Hutchison Macgregor (1877–1953)283

13 Roy F. Harrod (1900–1978)309

14 Robert Lowe Hall (1901–1988)331

15 Thomas Balogh (1905–1985)347

16 Colin Clark (1905–1989)371

17 P.W.S. Andrews (1914–1971)395

18 Hrothgar John Habakkuk (1915–2002)417

19 David Worswick (1916–2001)441

20 Ian Little (1918–2012)471

21 W.M. Gorman (1923–2003)503

22 W. Max Corden (1927–)521

23 Derek Robinson (1932–2014)545

24 David F. Hendry (1944–)563

25 Avner Offer (1944–)623

26 John Muellbauer (1944–)645

27 Paul Collier (1949–)673

28 Anthony J. Venables (1953–)689

29 Paul David Klemperer (1956–)711

30 John Vickers (1958–)735

2 arly Days: Seventeenth–Nineteenth

2.2 Florence Nightingale

2.3 Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

3 Econometrics at Oxford, 1900–1980

3.2 Oxford Institute of Statistics

3.3 James Meade

3.4 Martin Feldstein

3.5 Grayham Ernest Mizon

3.6 Alan Brown

3.7 Other Faculty

4 Oxford Econometrics, 1980–2000

4.1 Nuffield College

4.2 Doctoral Students

4.3 Research Funding

5.1 Software Developments

5.2 Easter Schools

6 ontributions to Data Provision