Assar Lindbeck

Assar Lindbeck     ( academic,  economist,  artist)
Born	26 January 1930  Umeå,  Sweden
Died	28 August 2020 (Age 90)
Nationality	Swedish
Alma mater	•  Uppsala University •  Stockholm University College
Swedish economist in the Wallenberg Sphere. Originally aligned with the Swedish Social Democrats under Olof Palme, he swapped sides to the opposition with great media attention in 1982, and was selected to attend the 1984 Bilderberg meeting.  Leader of Institute for International Economic Studies In office 1971 - 1995 Employer Stockholm University Attended Bilderberg/1984  A O Wallenberg Professor in National Economics and Banking Science In office 1964 - 1971 Employer Stockholm School of Economics Attended Bilderberg/1984

Carl Assar Eugén Lindbeck was a Swedish professor of economics at Stockholm University and at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN). Originally aligned with the Swedish Social Democrats under Olof Palme, he swapped sides to the opposition with great media attention in 1982, and was selected to attend the 1984 Bilderberg meeting.

Background

Lindbeck was the son of social welfare consultant Carl Lindbäck and school teacher Eugenia Sundelin

Education

He took a degree in economics at Uppsala University in 1952 and at Stockholm University in 1957, and a PhD at Stockholm University in 1963, where he became an associate professor in 1962.

Career

Lindbeck's research dealt with, among other things, unemployment (where he advocated the use of insider-outsider theory as an explanation for this), the welfare state (among other things, the effect of changing social norms) and China's reformed economy. He received his PhD from Stockholm University in 1963 with the thesis A study in monetary analysis. From 1964 to 1971 he held the A O Wallenberg professorship in economics and banking at the Stockholm School of Economics. From 1971 to 1995 Lindbeck was director of the Institute of international economics.

Lindbeck was for a long time associated with social democracy and was seen as one of the movement's foremost economic thinkers. However, this came to an abrupt end when Lindbeck, under great media attention, left the Social Democrats as a result of the party's stance on the wage earner fund issue during the 1982 election campaign. Lindbeck's withdrawal from the party was also widely used by the conservatives as an argument against the wage earner fund system.

Lindbeck was chairman of the Economic Commission, also called the Lindbeck commission, from 1992 to 1993. This was commissioned by the conservative Carl Bildt government in connection with the economic crisis in the early 1990s and made several proposals, among them to make the national bank "independent" and cut public expenditure.

From 1969 to 1994 Lindbeck was a member of the Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, whereupon he chaired the committee from 1980 to 1994. he was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, of the Academy of Engineering Sciences since 1970 and of the Finnish Academy of Sciences since 1972.

Since the 1960s, Lindbeck criticized Swedish rent regulation. This has resulted in one of his most famous quotes: "second only to bombing, rent control is the surest way to destroy a city".

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1984	11 May 1984	13 May 1984	Sweden Saltsjöbaden	The 32nd Bilderberg, held in Sweden

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