Economist Assar Lindbeck is dead

Assar Lindbeck was born in 1930 in Umeå but was mainly active at Stockholm University, where he was a professor at the Institute of International Economics.

For many years he was close to the Social Democrats, but the relationship came to an abrupt end in 1982 when he left the party during the election campaign due to his opposition to increased state ownership through wage earners' funds. A political idea that was never implemented.

To the public, he is perhaps best known for leading the State Economic Commission in connection with the crisis in the early 1990s. It was even named the Lindbeck Commission and resulted in 113 proposals on how Sweden's competitiveness and economy would be improved.

Many of the proposals were also implemented and are still of great importance today. Among other things, four-year election periods (previously it was three years between elections), an independent Riksbank free from political influence and expenditure ceilings in the central government budget.

Lindbeck also worked for many years for IFN, the Institute for Business Research. In connection with his 90th birthday last winter, IFN wrote that one of the heart issues he was never heard about in connection with the Lindbeck Commission was the abolition of the rent regulation.

According to IFN, Lindbeck once said that "after bombings, rent regulation is the safest way to destroy a city".

From 1969, Assar Lindbeck was involved in the work of naming the "Nobel laureates in economics". In 1980-1994, he was also chairman of the Riksbank's Price Committee.