Axel Leijonhufvud

Dr. Leijonhufvud was born in Stockholm, Sweden and obtained his bachelors degree at the University of Lund. After coming to the United States in 1960, he earned an M.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. He came to the University of California at Los Angeles in 1964 and was named Full Professor in 1971, served repeatedly as Department Chairman, and retired from UCLA in 1994. From 1995 he was Professor of Monetary Theory and Policy at the University of Trento, Italy and became Professore emerito of that University in 2009.

Professor Leijonhufvud has honorary degrees from the University of Lund, Sweden, and the University of Nice, Sophia-Antipolis, in France. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton and at the Centers for Advanced Studies in Vienna and in Jerusalem and he is an Overseas Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has lectured widely and has been a visiting professor at a number of universities including the European University Institute, Florence, Stockholm School of Economics, University of Konstanz, University of Strasbourg, Nihon University in Tokyo, and Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires. He has testified before Congress on issues of banking and monetary policy and has been an economic advisor to the President of Kazakhstan as well as a consultant to Russian regional governments. He has been included in 100 Great Economists Since Keynes (M. Blaug, editor), in the International Who’s Who, Who’s Who in America, etc.

Dr. Leijonhufvud’s best-known work, On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes: A Study in Monetary Economics (Oxford,1968) was translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Serbo-Croatian and Chinese. This line of research was pursued further in Information and Coordination (Oxford: 1981) and (with Daniel Heymann) in High Inflations (Oxford, 1995). Other books: Macroeconomic Instability and Coordination: Selected Essays: Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2000, Informazione, coordinamento e instabilitá macroeconomica (collection of essays edited by Elisabetta de Antoni): Roma: Editori Laterza 2004, Organización e inestabilidad económica: Ensayos elegidos: Buenos Aires: Temas 2006. Leijonhufvud has published numerous articles in professional journals and collected volumes. Since 2007 he has written frequently for the CEPR Policy Insight series and VoxEU.

Featuring this expert

Challenging the Foundation

Video | Apr 11, 2012

George Soros, Axel Leijonhufvud and Perry Mehrling in Berlin, Germany (2012).

The Web

Video | Feb 22, 2023

What is your first association when somebody talks to you about the economy?

​The Road not Taken

Article | Apr 19, 2016

Axel Leijonhufvud showed economists a promising path forward. They should have taken it. Leijonhufvud passed away on May 5, 2022

I Have to Act Like an Adult in Hong Kong

Article | Apr 1, 2013

The INET conference in Hong Kong is serious business.