Otto Steiger (economist)

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Otto Martin Steiger (born  December 12, 1938 in Dresden ; †  January 17, 2008 in Bremen ) was Professor of Economics at the Institute for Economic and Structural Research (IKSF) at the University of Bremen .

biography

Steiger spent his childhood on his parents' agricultural estate in Döschütz , Döbeln / Saxony, which was expropriated immediately after the end of the war. He attended the Felix-Klein-Gymnasium in Göttingen from 1949 to 1958 and studied economics and economic history at the Free University of Berlin and at Uppsala University from 1958 to 1964 . In 1973 he became professor for general economic theory with a focus on monetary theory and macroeconomics at the University of Bremen.

In 1979 he was visiting professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick (New Jersey) , from 1981 to 1988 at the International Summer School of the Istituto Avanzati di Economica Politica at the University of Trieste , in 2002 at the University of Latvia in Riga and in 2003 at the University of Lyons and the Mittuniversitetet Östersund in Sweden.

From 1989 to 1992 he was nominated by the Swedish Academy of Sciences for the Swedish Reichsbank's Economics Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel .

Research priorities

  • Reformulation of the core of economic theory as the theory of property , ie of interest and money . At the center of the economic theoretical research that he carried out with his colleague Gunnar Heinsohn from Bremen , property is an elementary category from which - if it is distinguished from mere property - interest, money and markets can be derived. The core of Heinsohn / Steiger's monetary theory is the civil law fact that property in contracts is the subject of asset liability (see liability ) and thus serves to secure enforceable debt claims . Heinsohn and Steiger put the classical and neoclassical school an alternative paradigm in the sense of "scientific revolution" ( Thomas Kuhn ) against that property economics ( "Property Economics") or theory of ownership economy, which is an institutional foundation of the post-Keynesian designate approach and that has practical implications, especially for the transformation of traditional, feudal or socialist structured societies into market economies: According to this model, the first step in building a functioning money economy must always be the institutionalization of property rights ( land registry and cadastral documentation of property rights) and the institutionalization of a civil contract law and above all the law of obligations , which first and foremost guarantees the enforceability of private debt contracts.

Bibliography (selection)

  • 1971 Studies on the Origin of the New Economics in Sweden: An Anti-Critique. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin.
  • 1979 Human Production: General Population Theory of the Modern Age. Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-518-10914-6 (with Gunnar Heinsohn and Rolf Knieper , summary (entry in the lexicon of economic works)).
  • 1985 The Annihilation of Wise Women: Contributions to the Theory and History of Population and Childhood. Herbstein, ISBN 3-88880-057-9 (2005 4th, extended edition, Area, Erftstadt, ISBN 3-89996-340-7 ) (with Gunnar Heinsohn).
  • 1988 Keynes' <General Theory> after fifty years. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, ISBN 3-428-06429-1 (ed., With Harald Hagemann).
  • 1993 The status and the near future of money research: Festschrift for Hajo Riese on his 60th birthday, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, ISBN 3-428-07534-X (ed., With H.-J. Stadermann)
  • 1996 Property, Interest and Money: Unsolved Riddles of Economics, Reinbek near Hamburg, ISBN 3-89518-494-2 (2004 3rd, revised edition, Marburg, ISBN 3-89518-494-2 ) (with Gunnar Heinsohn, table of contents )
  • 1999 Challenge of the Money Economy: Theory and Practice of Currency Political Events, Metropolis, Marburg, ISBN 3-89518-231-1 (Ed., With HJ Stadermann)
  • 2001: The Economics of Commitments: Property, Freedom and Liability in the Money Economy. Metropolis, Marburg, ISBN 3-89518-345-8 (ed., With Hans-Joachim Stadermann).
  • 2001 General Theory of the Economy - Volume I: School Economics. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, ISBN 3-16-147608-5 (2006 2nd edition, ISBN 3-16-149009-6 ) (with Hans-Joachim Stadermann).
  • 2002 Property theory of economics versus economic theory without property. Supplementary volume for the new edition of “Property, Interest and Money” . (2nd, reviewed edition 2002), ISBN 3-89518-352-0 , Marburg: Metropolis (with Gunnar Heinsohn)
  • 2006 Property Economics. Metropolis, Marburg, ISBN 3-89518-534-5 (with Gunnar Heinsohn, table of contents ).
  • 2006 General Theory of Economy - Volume II: Nominalökonomik. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ISBN 3-16-148909-8 (by Hans-Joachim Stadermann; ed., With Hans-Joachim Stadermann).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Steiger, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steiger, Otto Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 2008
Place of death Bremen