Finn Erling Kydland (born 1 December 1943) is a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

known for his contributions to business cycle theory. He is the Henley Professor of Economics at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. He also holds the Richard P. Simmons Distinguished Professorship at the

Tepper School of Business The Tepper School of Business is the business school of Carnegie Mellon University. It is located in the university's campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. The school offers degrees from the undergraduate through doctoral levels, in addition ...

of Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned his PhD, and a part-time position at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). Kydland was a co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, with

Edward C. Prescott Edward Christian Prescott (December 26, 1940 – November 6, 2022) was an American economist. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: ...

, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind

business cycle Business cycles are intervals of expansion followed by recession in economic activity. These changes have implications for the welfare of the broad population as well as for private institutions. Typically business cycles are measured by examin ...

s."

Biography

Early years

Kydland grew up as the eldest of six siblings at the family farm in Søyland,

Gjesdal Gjesdal is a municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Jæren. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Ålgård. Other villages in Gjesdal include Dirdal, Frafjord, Gilja, ...

, which is located in the

Jæren Jæren is a Districts of Norway, traditional district in Rogaland county, Norway. The other districts in Rogaland are Dalane, Ryfylke, and Haugalandet. Jæren is one of the 15 districts that comprise Western Norway. At about , Jæren is the large ...

farming region in Rogaland county, southwestern

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. 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

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

from NHH in 1968 and a PhD in economics from

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name *Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * Carnegie Building (Troy, New York), on the campus of Rensselaer Polyte ...

in 1973, dissertation: ''Decentralized Macroeconomic Planning'', supervised by

. After his PhD 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 United States since then.

Scholarship

Kydland's areas of expertise are

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

in general and

political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...

. His main areas of teaching and interest are

monetary Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are ...

and

fiscal policy In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variab ...

and labor economics. He joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in 1977, where he served as a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

of Economics until 2004, when he became a faculty member of the

and founded the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance (LAEF) at this same institution. He is a Research Associate for the

Federal Reserve Banks A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve A ...

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

and

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, and a Fellow at the IC² Institute at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

. He is also an adjunct professor at the NHH, and has held visiting scholar and professor positions at, among other places, the

Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, an ...

and the

Universidad Torcuato di Tella The Torcuato Di Tella University (''Universidad Torcuato Di Tella'', commonly referred to as UTDT or La Di Tella) is a non-profit private university founded in 1991. Located Buenos Aires, Argentina, it is focused primarily on social sciences. The ...

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Personal life

Kydland married Liv Kjellevold in 1968, with whom he had four children; sons, Eirik, Jon Martin, and daughters, Camilla and Kari. He is now married to Tonya Schooler.

Honours and awards

* Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2004) * Fellow,

Econometric Society The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. It is an independent organization with no connections to societies of professional mathematicians or statisticians. ...

(1992– ) * John Stauffer National Fellowship,

(1982–1983) * Alexander Henderson Award, Carnegie Mellon (1973) * Member of the

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick Unive ...

. * International Chamber of Commerce Oslo Business for Peace Award 2017

References

External links

Faculty information from University of California, Santa Barbara

Faculty information from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business
* including the Prize Lecture on December 8, 2004 ''Quantitative Aggregate Theory''
Econometric Society

Alexander Henderson Award
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kydland, Finn 1943 births Living people Tepper School of Business alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty New classical economists Fellows of the Econometric Society Macroeconomists Nobel laureates in Economics Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Norwegian Nobel laureates Norwegian School of Economics alumni Norwegian School of Economics faculty University of California, Santa Barbara faculty 20th-century Norwegian economists 21st-century Norwegian economists National Bureau of Economic Research People from Gjesdal