Helge Majer

Helge Hagen Majer (born August 13, 1941 in Isny im Allgäu , † September 19, 2006 in Prien am Chiemsee ) was a German economist , sustainability researcher and passionate sailor. From 1979 to 2005 he headed the department for environmental and innovation research at the University of Stuttgart and founded the Ulm Initiative Group for Sustainable Economic Development (unw) in 1993 together with friends.

Life

After studying economics at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen from 1965 to 1970, Majer did his doctorate in 1973 with Alfred Eugen Ott at the Institute for Applied Economic Research on international productivity comparisons with the title The "Technological Gap" between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America . In 1978 he completed his habilitation with the title Industrial Research in the Federal Republic of Germany at the University of Tübingen .

From 1979 to March 2005 Majer was the owner of the department for environmental and innovation research at the Institute for Economics and Law (IVR) at the University of Stuttgart .

While his scientific work was initially strongly neoclassical (including environmental and energy issues), his research interests changed noticeably in the course of the 80s and 90s. In 1984 he published “ Qualitative Growth . Introduction to Concepts of Quality of Life ”, which thematized the increasing gap between traditional national product calculations and the elusive quantity“ Quality of Life ”.

Majer became a growth critic who increasingly countered the negative consequences of quantitative economic growth with the model of " sustainable development ". Since the founding of the un, Majer has been active in the areas of regional, economic and corporate sustainability . His research areas included sustainable economic development, regional sustainability, innovation research, structural research and network theory. The most important works were u. a. “Economic Growth and Sustainable Development” (1997) and “Modern Macroeconomics” (2001).

Helge Majer was also one of the first members of the Association for Ecological Economy eV (VÖÖ) founded in 1996 .

Monographs

• The "technological gap" between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America. An empirical analysis. (= Series of publications by the Institute for Applied Economic Research. Volume 22). PhD thesis. Tübingen 1973, ISBN 3-16-334731-2 .
• Industrial research in the Federal Republic of Germany. A theoretical and empirical analysis. (= Tübingen economic treatises. Volume 24). Habilitation thesis. Tübingen 1978, ISBN 3-16-340722-6 .
• Macroeconomic supply-demand analysis. Tübingen 1982.
• Macroeconomics. Theory and Politics , 6th edition, Munich and Vienna, 1997 (1st edition 1984), ISBN 978-3-486-24287-4 .
• Repetitorium der Makroökonomik , 6th edition, Munich and Vienna 1995 (1st edition 1985), ISBN 978-3-486-23363-6 .
• Economic growth and sustainable development. 3rd ed., Munich and Vienna 1997 (1st ed. 1992 published as economic growth. Paradigm shift from quantitative to qualitative growth ), ISBN 3-486-24557-0 .
• Modern macroeconomics. Holistic view. Munich and Vienna 2001, ISBN 978-3-486-25549-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Helge Majer in the catalog of the German National Library