Stefan Homburg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stefan Homburg (2013)

Stefan Homburg (born March 10, 1961 in Hellersen , today a district of Lüdenscheid , North Rhine-Westphalia ) is a German financial scientist . He is Professor of Public Finance and Director of the Institute for Public Finance at Leibniz Universität Hannover . He also works part-time as a tax advisor.

He became known to a wider public through his controversial criticism of government measures during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic .

biography

Homburg passed his Abitur in 1980 at the Lessinggymnasium in Düsseldorf . He received a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation and began studying economics , mathematics and philosophy at the University of Cologne .

In the third semester, together with his later doctoral supervisor Bernhard Felderer, he wrote the textbook Macroeconomics and New Macroeconomics , which was first published in 1984 and, with nine editions and translations into five foreign languages, is considered a standard work in economics . In 1985 he graduated in Cologne with a degree in economics . From 1985 to 1989 he was a research assistant in Cologne, from 1989 to 1990 academic councilor in Dortmund.

In 1987 he was awarded the title summa cum laude by the University of Cologne as Dr. rer. pol . PhD . His dissertation was published in 1988 under the title Theory of Old Age Insurance . In 1991 the habilitation and the venia legendi for economics followed. From 1990 to 1992 Homburg was professor of economic theory at the University of Bonn . From 1992 to 1997 he took over the chair for finance at the University of Magdeburg . In Magdeburg he was elected member of the State Committee of Doctors and Health Insurance Funds of the State of Saxony-Anhalt for the term from 1993 to 1995.

Homburg has been Professor of Public Finance at Leibniz Universität Hannover since 1997. He turned down further offers to the University of Tübingen and the University of Cologne. His research and teaching focus is on taxation and tax law , macroeconomics , financial equalization and social policy . In 1997 his textbook on tax studies "Allgemeine Steuerlehre" appeared. From 1999 to 2007 Homburg was the dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Hanover.

Between 1996 and 2003 Homburg was co-editor of the association journals of the Verein für Socialpolitik , from 1996 to 1999 of the "Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften" and from 2000 to 2003 of " Perspektiven der Wirtschaftsppolitik ".

As a non-party scientist, Homburg advised all parties represented in the Bundestag, including at hearings of the Finance Committee, the Budget Committee and the Legal Committee of the German Bundestag. In 1996, Federal Finance Minister Theo Waigel appointed him to the Scientific Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry of Finance . In 2003, Homburg became a member of the Federalism Commission I of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, which was preparing an amendment to the constitution, at the suggestion of Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Christian Wulff . In 2004 Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder appointed him to the Council for Sustainable Development of the Federal Government. In addition to these committee activities, Homburg advised German politicians individually. The parliamentary group Die Linke explicitly referred to Homburg in a request to the federal government about the beneficiaries of the bank bailout.

Homburg was a guest contributor to debates for the New York Times and the Axis of the Good blog .

Financial and economic policy positions

2008 financial crisis

After the collapse of the Lehmann Brothers bank at the end of 2008, Homburg publicly spoke out very firmly against bank bailouts and debt-financed economic programs. He took on a minority position, which he defended in the magazine Der Spiegel in a dispute with the then chairman of the economy Bert Rürup .

Euro

Stefan Homburg at the AfD federal party conference 2015 in Bremen

After 2011, Homburg warned of the dangers of the euro, which he had vehemently rejected in several articles in 1997. In doing so, he drew parallels between the problems of the euro zone and the currency reforms of 1923 and 1948. In 2012, he was also one of the 172 signatories of the “Economists' appeal for protest”. He expressed his view that the European monetary union would not last. Homburg demanded that Germany give up the euro and stop paying more tax money to creditors from other countries.

According to FAZ , Homburg supported the Alternative for Germany (AFD) party initiated by Bernd Lucke in its founding phase. He explained this by saying that he was indignant about the “breaches of law” which, in his view, existed in the violation of the Maastricht criteria and the non-assistance clause . At the federal party conference of the AFD 2015 in Bremen, Homburg gave a speech on the subject of "Reform of income tax".

ESM treaty

In 2012, Homburg claimed that the ESM Treaty was "evidently unconstitutional" because it undermined parliament's budgetary law and thus violated the principle of democracy . The Federal Constitutional Court, however, ruled in 2014 that the ESM Treaty is constitutional, but imposed conditions on the upper limit of liability and parliamentary participation, which the European member states agreed to in an additional declaration to the treaty.

Market economy

Homburg advocates less state influence. In 2019 he signed a petition aimed at writing the market economy into the Basic Law so that a “planned economy” with a “socialization of land” would be prevented. The petition received some media attention in 2020 because several of the signatories were particularly committed to easing the state ban on contact imposed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic .

Controversy over comments on the Covid-19 pandemic

Since March 2020, Stefan Homburg has been speaking in the media, on YouTube and at public demonstrations about the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany . On April 13, 2020, he published the discussion paper Effectiveness of Corona Lockdowns: Evidence for a Number of Countries . According to his account, the government measures to lockdowns in seven countries took place between two and eight days after the turning point in the number of new infections. He sees this as evidence that countries with the lockdown did not come through the pandemic better than those without. On April 15, Homburg published the opinion article Why Germany's lockdown is wrong - and Sweden is doing a lot better in the newspaper Die Welt . Homburg initially opposed the extensive closure of the German economy ( lockdown ) on March 23, 2020 and the decision of April 15, 2020 to essentially continue the lockdown. According to Homburg, Germany should follow the example of Sweden , whose government did not have a lockdown. In a YouTube interview with Milena Preradovic on April 17, 2020, he referred to figures from the Robert Koch Institute to justify his position and again stated that the political measures were unnecessary and hardly effective.

In a corrective fact check, Homburg's statements on the Corona crisis were classified as "partially incorrect"; Correctiv's article was partly based on statements from the Robert Koch Institute , which it had sent by email. Various scientists - u. a. from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the economists Rüdiger Bachmann , Sebastian Dullien and Jan Schnellenbach - contradicted Homburg's statements and his interpretation of the numbers. Bachmann accused Homburg of gross methodological errors. Homburg also said in the Preradovic interview that the federal government secretly shares the same opinion as he and that the "elites [...] know the real facts." Also, Federal Health Minister Spahn know that the "whole [...] not dangerous" is.

At the end of April Homburg brought the federal government close to a dictatorship and declared, "We now have a kind of Chinese political model here". The Sueddeutsche Zeitung he confirmed on demand that he share the view "fascism", which was created by a visitor to the demonstration in response to his speech. In various speeches, he also fueled fears of vaccinations and speculated that the COVID-19 outbreak could be the result of a vaccination campaign in northern Italy. He also thought it was certain that there would be forced vaccinations against the corona virus. He calls the protective masks recommended by medical professionals “slave masks with which the population is supposed to be kept mentally down”.

On May 9, 2020, he appeared in Stuttgart as a speaker at a demo against the COVID-19 restrictions attended by conspiracy theorists , among others , at which Ken Jebsen also spoke. There he declared that scientists advising the government on the pandemic were "largely corrupted" and claimed that since the spread of the coronavirus he had a better understanding of what happened in 1933 when it came to power . He also called the statistics produced by the Robert Koch Institute "lies" there. A few days later he referred to his comparison with 1933 and affirmed on Twitter: "This is 1933".

The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote in an article on May 14th: "Wild claims, no evidence." It attested that he was "selective reproduction of information"; this is a "typical means" of spreading conspiracy myths . Homburg himself is "not a rude Covidiot, not one of those who consider the whole Corona crisis to be a crazy conspiracy", but he appears before them. As in “many conspiracy contributions”, Homburg also mixes “unsubstantiated accusations with legitimate criticisms and considerations”. Previously, Homburg u. a. compared the current situation in Germany with the early days of National Socialism .

The journalist and cultural historian Dieter Schnaas judged in mid-May 2020 in the Wirtschaftswoche that Homburg's “criticism of the government has escalated” “and that what was once debatable about Homburg's“ criticism ”[...] the economist Jan Schnellenbach had already exemplary destroyed”. Homburg wrote a reply to Schnellenbach in the blog Economic Freedom .

On May 23, 2020 it became known that Homburg had excluded students who had uploaded a letter of protest to his theses on the lockdown on his lecture platform from his online lecture "Public Finance". He justified this with the fact that the students had "vandalized" the learning platform. He had previously announced that it should only be about the lecture topic. The teaching material would be sent to the students. In response to the exclusion, the Leibniz University of Hanover announced that it would investigate the incident. On May 25, the Senate, Presidium and University Council of the University of Hanover published a joint declaration in which they referred to the fundamental rights of academic freedom and freedom of expression. At the same time, however, they decidedly distanced themselves from Homburg's statements, especially with regard to his tweet, in which he equated today's conditions with 1933. That was "an unbearable trivialization of the events in 1933". Homburg told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he had "never drawn parallels to the National Socialist dictatorship", but referred to "dangers like in the late phase of the Weimar Republic ".

Works and publications (selection)

Books

  • A Study in Monetary Macroeconomics. Oxford University Press 2017, ISBN 978-0-19-880753-7 .
  • General tax theory. 7th edition Verlag Vahlen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8006-4922-8 .
  • Macroeconomics and New Macroeconomics. Springer, Berlin 2005, 9., verb. (1st edition 1984, with Bernhard Felderer). English edition: Macroeconomics and new macroeconomics. Springer, Berlin 1987.
  • Macroeconomics exercise book. Springer, Berlin 1999, 4th, verb. (1st edition 1989, with Bernhard Felderer).
  • Tax law for economists. Vahlen, Munich 1996.
  • Efficient Economic Growth. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 1992.
  • Theory of old-age insurance. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 1988.

items

literature

Web links

Commons : Stefan Homburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vera de Vries: Stefan Homburg , in Tigo Zeyen, Anne Weber-Ploemacher (ed.), Joachim Giesel (photos): 100 hannoversche Köpfe , Hameln: CW Niemeyer Buchverlage, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8271-9251-6 and ISBN 3-8271-9251-X , pp. 90f.
  2. ↑ Bernhard Felderer, Stefan Homburg: Macroeconomics and New Macroeconomics (= Heidelberger Taschenbücher; Vol. 239), Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York / Tokyo 1984, ISBN 978-3-540-13690-3
  3. ↑ Daniel Rettig: Talent: The secret of the high-flyer. Retrieved July 12, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Kerstin Schneider, Joachim Weimann: Prevent the theft of prosperity: Economic policy advice in Germany - a portrait . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-09495-9 ( com.ph [accessed July 13, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Stefan Homburg: Theory of old-age security . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-61560-3 ( com.ph [accessed July 12, 2020]).
  6. ^ Stefan Homburg - Institute for Public Finance. Retrieved July 12, 2020 .
  7. ^ Stefan Homburg - Institute for Public Finance. Retrieved July 16, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Stefan Homburg: General Taxation. Vahlen, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-8006-2192-4 . 7th edition. Vahlen, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-8006-4922-8 .
  9. ↑ See for example Bundestag printed matter 13/5952 of November 5, 1996, p. 9; 16/2069 of June 29, 2006, p. 10; 17/3405 of October 26, 2010.
  10. ↑ The superior one . TIME. September 21, 2006. Retrieved March 27, 2012.
  11. ↑ Stefan Homburg , in: 100 hannoversche Köpfe , ed. by Tigo Zeyen and Anne Weber-Ploemacher, with photographs by Joachim Giesel, Niemeyer, Hameln 2006, ISBN 978-3-8271-9251-6 and ISBN 3-8271-9251-X , pp. 90f.
  12. ↑ See Bundestag printed matter 17/762 of February 7, 2010, p. 2
  13. ↑ Germany Should Leave the Euro Zone - NYTimes.com. September 14, 2013, accessed April 22, 2020 .
  14. ^ Articles by and about Stefan Homburg on the axis of the good
  15. ↑ Wirtschaftswoche from October 25, 2008
  16. ↑ Wirtschaftswoche of February 10, 2009
  17. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 11, 2009
  18. ^ Der SPIEGEL of January 26, 2009
  19. ↑ Stefan Homburg: The European single currency - weighed and found to be too easy. Handelsblatt dated June 5, 1997, p. 2.
  20. ↑ Stefan Homburg: Why Democracy is Essential to Monetary Stability , IDEAS. Retrieved October 12, 2014.
  21. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of September 29, 2011
  22. ^ Call for protest: The open letter of the economists in full . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed July 14, 2020]).
  23. ↑ FOCUS Online: "Out of the dilemma, away with the euro!". Accessed on April 22, 2020 .
  24. ↑ "Terror without End". Retrieved April 22, 2020 .
  25. ^ Winand von Petersdorff: "Alternative for Germany": The new anti-euro party . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed April 18, 2020]).
  26. ↑ Reinhold Michels: Party Congress. Lucke has to tame the AfD, RP Online, January 30, 2015
  27. ↑ FOCUS Online: "The euro has no chance of survival". Accessed on July 12, 2020 : “Historically, modern democracy arose from budget law. Parliament's budgetary law, which includes the right to make decisions and to control, must therefore be seen as the core of the principle of democracy. (..) The Bundestag's right of control has even been reduced to zero; he has no way of checking the use of German tax money by the ESM. "
  28. ^ Karlsruhe approves ESM rescue package , Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 18, 2014
  29. ↑ Christian Rickens, Stefan Kaiser, DER SPIEGEL: ESM: Euro countries meet the requirements of the Federal Constitutional Court - DER SPIEGEL - Economy. Retrieved July 16, 2020 .
  30. ↑ Susanne Götze, Annika Joeres : Corona Report. The lobbyists against it . In: Correctiv , May 20, 2020. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  31. ↑ Effectiveness of Corona Lockdowns. (PDF) In: diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de. Retrieved May 16, 2020 .
  32. ↑ a b Sweden as a role model: finance scientists against corona lockdown - WELT. In: welt.de. Retrieved May 16, 2020 .
  33. ↑ Stefan Homburg: Excess mortality is falling: the government is running out of arguments for the lockdown . In: THE WORLD . April 21, 2020 ( welt.de [accessed April 22, 2020]).
  34. ↑ Was the "lockdown" unnecessary? In: Tagesschau.de , April 21, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  35. ↑ Fact check on Stefan Homburg: Why his arguments about the reproduction number of the coronavirus fall short . In: Correctiv , April 22, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  36. ↑ Was the ban on contact superfluous? . In: n-tv.de , April 24, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  37. ↑ Economist doubts the benefit of the ban on contact . In: Norddeutscher Rundfunk , April 24, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  38. ↑ From "world" experts and real professionals. In: Übermedien. May 5, 2020, accessed on May 9, 2020 (German).
  39. ↑ Jan Schnellenbach: Covid-19 and the limits of bivariate correlation analyzes , accessed on May 10, 2020
  40. ↑ Tagesspiegel: How close the exchange between economists and Olaf Scholz is
  41. ↑ Tagesspiegel: An economics professor as a whispering Corona critic , May 29, 2020
  42. ↑ a b c d Prof. Dr. Conspiracy . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 14, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2020.
  43. ↑ curiouser Protestmix in Stuttgart: Germany's largest Corona Party . In: taz , May 10, 2020. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
  44. ^ Matthias Koch: Conspiracy Theories: The Five Driving Factors . In: RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland , May 22, 2020. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  45. ↑ Dieter Schnaas : The Corona Conspirators . In: Wirtschaftswoche , May 16, 2020. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  46. ^ Stefan Homburg: The Corona Controversy (3) Two replies. May 10, 2020, accessed on July 16, 2020 (German).
  47. ↑ Thortsen Mumma: The case of Stefan Homburg. An economics professor as a whispering Corona critic , Der Tagesspiegel, May 29, 2020
  48. ^ Protest against controversial professor: Students excluded from online lectures , in: RND, May 23, 2020.
  49. ↑ University of Hanover: Students protest against Homburg - and fly out of the lecture. In: haz.de. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
  50. ↑ Joint statement of the Senate, the Presidium and the University Council of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hanover on the statements made by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Homburg on the Corona crisis. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  51. ↑ Bastian Brinkmann: University management distances itself , Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 25, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Homburg, Stefan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German finance scientist
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Hellersen