Assar Lindbeck
Carl Assar Eugén Lindbeck is a Swedish professor of economics at Stockholm University and at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
Lindbeck is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and previously chaired the Academy's prize committee for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was the first Swede to be appointed a foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association, and one of only three Swedes ever.
Lindbeck has done research on unemployment, the welfare state, and China's reformed economy. Lindbeck received a Ph.D. from Stockholm University in 1963 with the doctoral thesis A study in monetary analysis.
Assar Lindbeck also has a theory on self-destructive welfare state dynamics, in which the welfare system erodes norms relating to work and responsibility: change in the work ethic is related to a rising dependence on welfare state institutions. It was on the basis of this viewpoint that he promoted the economic theories of conservative American theorist James McGill Buchanan. Indeed, it is said that it was through Lindbeck's influence at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that Buchanan was awarded the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, a decision which was criticized by a British columnist in 2017.
Lindbeck previously headed the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. In 1992–1993 he headed the so-called "Lindbeck Commission", which was appointed by the Government of Sweden to propose reforms in light of the then-ongoing economic crisis.
Lindbeck has criticized the Swedish rent control system since the 1960s. This has resulted in one of his most famous quotes: “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”
