Finn E. Kydland

Finn E. Kydland

Neoclassical economics
Photo: White House, 2004
Birth	1 December 1943 (1943-12-01) (age 65)
Nationality	Norway
Field	Macroeconomics
Influences	Edward C. Prescott David Cass
Contributions	Real Business Cycle Theory Time consistency in economic policy

Finn Erling Kydland (born 1 December 1943) is a Norwegian economist. He is currently the Henley Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also holds the Richard P. Simmons Distinguished Professorship at the Tepper School of Business of Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned his Ph.D.. Kydland was a co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (shared with Edward C. Prescott), "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles".

Biography

Early years

Kydland grew up as the eldest of six siblings at the family farm in Søyland, Gjesdal, which is located in the Jæren farming region in Rogaland county, southwestern Norway. He recalls having had a liberal upbringing, his parents not imposing many limitations on their children. Finn Kydland became interested in mathematics and economics as a young adult, after he did some bookkeeping at a friend's mink farm.

With a freshly awakened interest in theoretical economics, Kydland earned a B.S. from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) in 1968 and a Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon in 1973, dissertation: Decentralized Macroeconomic Planning. After his Ph.D. he returned to NHH as an assistant professor. In 1978 he moved back to Carnegie Mellon as an associate professor. He has been living in the US since then.

Scholarship

Kydland's areas of expertise are economics in general and political economy. His main areas of teaching and interest are business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy and labor economics. He joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in 1977, where he served as a Professor of Economics until 2004, when he became a faculty member of the University of California, Santa Barbara and founded the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance (LAEF) at this same institution.^[1] He is a Research Associate for the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas, Cleveland and St. Louis, and a Senior Research Fellow at the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the NHH, and has held visiting scholar and professor positions at, among other places, the Hoover Institution and the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Personal life

Kydland was married to Liv Kjellevold in 1968 with whom he had four children; sons, Jon Martin and Eirik Thomas, daughters, Camilla, and Kari. His second wife is Tonya Schooler.^[2]

Honours and awards

• Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2004)
• Fellow, Econometric Society (1992– )
• John Stauffer National Fellowship, Hoover Institution (1982–1983)
• Alexander Henderson Award, Carnegie Mellon (1973)
• member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.^[3]

References

• Peter Badge (2008). "Prof. Dr. Finn E. Kydland". Nobel Laureate Meetings at Lindau. http://www.lindau-nobel.de.axprod.net/LaureateDetails.AxCMS?UserID=6863. Retrieved 2008-08-17. 
• Tore Frängsmyr, ed. (2004). "Finn E. Kydland Biography". Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Foundation. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2004/kydland-autobio.html. Retrieved 2008-07-29. 

External links

• Faculty information from University of California, Santa Barbara
• Faculty information from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business
• Information from nobelprize.org
• Econometric Society
• Alexander Henderson Award
• IDEAS/RePEc