Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson


Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson is a professor of political science at the University of Iceland and a frequent commentator on current affairs in the Icelandic media. He is best known as a staunch spokesman for free market policies, and for neoliberalism or classical liberalism.

Education and career

Hannes was born in Reykjavík, Iceland. Graduating from the Reykjavík Grammar School in 1972, Hannes completed his BA in philosophy and history and his M. A. in history from the University of Iceland, before going on to study politics at the University of Oxford where he received his DPhil. in 1985 for a thesis on "Hayek's Conservative Liberalism". At Oxford, he was in 1984-5 the R. G. Collingwood Scholar at Pembroke College; and he founded, with some like-minded friends, the Oxford Hayek Society. From 1988, Hannes has taught at the University of Iceland, becoming professor of political theory in the Faculty of Social Science in 1995. In 1984, he became a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, serving on its board of directors in 1998–2004. He was also a member of the board of the Central Bank of Iceland 2001–2009. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, UCLA, George Mason University in Virginia, Tokyo University of the Fisheries, LUISS in Rome and International Centre for Economic Research, in Turin. He has twice been a Fulbright Scholar in the U. S. A. and once a Sasakawa Scholar in Japan. In 2005, Hannes organised a regional meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Iceland, devoted to "Freedom and Property in the 21st century".

Influence

In 1984, from October 2 to 10, Hannes, with Kjartan Gunnarsson, operated an illegal radio station, to protest against the government monopoly of broadcasting. Police eventually closed the station down. Hannes and Kjartan were indicted and fined for breaking the law on broadcasting. But the operation of the station and its closure turned many in the leadership of the Independence Party towards supporting the abolition of the government monopoly. The Icelandic parliament abolished the monopoly in 1985, and the law came into effect in 1986.
In early 1990, Hannes published a book on fisheries management, an important subject in Iceland whose main export is fish. It was entitled The Fish Stocks in the Icelandic Waters: The Property of the Nation or of the State? Hannes advocated a system of individual, transferable quotas, ITQs, in the Icelandic fisheries, where initially the quotas would be given free of charge to the owners of fishing vessels, in order to gain their support for what was tantamount to the enclosure of the Icelandic fishing grounds. The leadership of the Independence Party also supported the ITQ system. The Independence Party held the Ministry of Fisheries 1991–2009.
In 2002, Hannes published a book titled How Can Iceland Become the Richest Country in the World?suggesting that Iceland could become an international financial centre offering low corporate taxes and a stable political environment. He named, as precedents, Luxembourg and Ireland – two other small European countries— and small islands, such as the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Caymans.
The corporate incomes tax in Iceland has already been lowered in the 1990s from 50% to 18%, and the net wealth tax had been abolished. The free-market reforms under the reign of the Independence Party 1991–2004 were comprehensive, not only consisting in tax reductions, but also in privatization, liberalization and stabilization. Enjoying access to the European financial market because of Iceland's membership of the EEA and also enjoying the high credit ratings for Icelandic companies earned in the 1991–2004 period, the Icelandic banks could expand rapidly, especially in the period after 2004. In the 2008 international financial crisis, the Icelandic Central Bank, since 2005 under the governorship of Davíð Oddsson, was refused credit lines from the US and Europe, with the result that the banks collapsed. It was argued that the Icelandic bank collapse was also a collapse of the neo-liberal model imposed on Iceland by Hannes and Davíð Oddsson. Hannes, however, points out that the Icelandic banks were subject to the same legal and regulatory framework as other banks in the EEA, and that their rapid credit expansion mostly took place after 2004.

Main Writings