Nationalekonomiska institutionen

Lindahl Lectures

Erik Lindahl (1891-1960) was Professor of Economics at Uppsala University 1942-58. In 1986 the university decided to establish a series of lectures in honour of Lindahl’s contributions to economic science. The lectures are sponsored by Nordea and published by Oxford University Press.

The next lectures (Spring 2013) will be given by Professor Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics (http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/ ). The theme of the lectures will be “Inequality and Capitalism in the Long Run”.

The 2010 lectures were given on November 22–24 by Professor Ernst Fehr, University of Zurich. The theme of the lectures was “Origins and Determinants of Human Preferences”.

Slides lecture I
Slides lecture II

The 2006 Lindahl Lectures were given on November 21-23 by Professor Richard Blundell, University College London. The theme of the lectures was Evaluating Welfare Reforms. The lectures analysed the recent development of welfare policies aimed at low wage workers. They focused on the growth in welfare programs that require some form of work requirement and explored the arguments for integrating the tax and welfare system and specifically the development of earned income tax credit policies directed towards families with children. The general motivation for these policies has stemmed from changes in the economic environment, specifically the relative decline in the real wages of the low skilled and those with limited labour market experience, together with a desire to avoid child poverty. The lectures offered a number of empirical examples, discussed microeconometric techniques and made use of public finance theory. Alternative methods for evaluation were examined and the optimal design of welfare reforms was analysed.

1991 Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz
The New Welfare Economics: Public Policy in the Presence of Asymmetric Information