About

Who is this?

I teach economics in the Institute of Public Affairs Management at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. My teaching reflects my (relatively) eclectic research interests, and combines elements from Austrian, institutional, evolutionary, and urban economics. I’m also interested in economic history, cultural change, and cross-sectional socio-economic analyses.

I was born in the small town of Vanersborg on Lake Vanern, near the west coast of Sweden. I grew up in several different places, including Gothenburg, Philadelphia, Vienna, and Umea. Later, I earned a BA in Applied Statistics from Gothenburg University and a Ph.D. in Regional Planning from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). As a doctoral student, I spent a year at the University of Reading as well as a year at the National Taiwan University.

Since 1994, I’ve mostly been living and working in Taiwan, first in the Taipei region (1994-2001) and since 2003 in southern Taiwan. From July 2001 to December 2002 I worked as a regional development consultant in the Oresund region (Copenhagen and Malmo). Nowadays I commute between Taiwan’s second and fourth largest cities; Kaohsiung and Tainan. Kaohsiung is one of the world’s ten largest container ports while Tainan was the capital of Taiwan until the late nineteenth century. Southern Taiwan is a lush, fertile, and densely populated region, with about a quarter of Taiwan’s total population of 23 million. It’s not a bad place to call home for those of us who prefer sweltering summers to snowy winters.  

My research has focused on combining the insights of Austrian, institutional, and evolutionary economics as well as on empirical analyses of urban real estate markets. I’m the author or co-author of two academic books and the co-editor of two more. I have also written a number of articles that have appeared in journals such as the Annals of Regional Science, the Journal of Transport Geography, and Technological Forecasting & Social Change and in edited volumes published by Ashgate, Elgar, Elsevier, and Palgrave.

Unlike many academics, I don’t believe that the best old theories are necessarily always incorporated in newer theories; a lot of useful theories are simply forgotten. This, I believe, is a consequence of our very imperfect knowledge and unavoidable biases. Thus, the most rewarding learning experiences often involve the reading of books that may seem outdated to some. In my evolving interpretation of the world, there is a small number of books and articles that have had the effect of restructuring my thinking; they are therefore books that – to at least a limited extent – reflect my world view. The books in question are “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (Jane Jacobs, 1961); “Capital and Its Structure” (Ludwig Lachmann, 1956); “The Theory of Economic Development” (Joseph Schumpeter, 1934); “Law, Legislation, and Liberty” (Friedrich Hayek, 1979); “The Firm, the Market, and the Law” (Ronald Coase, 1990; includes Coase’s 1937 article), “Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit” (Frank Knight, 1921) and “The Nature of Rationality” (Robert Nozick, 1993). I should also add Hayek’s two papers on knowledge – “Economics and Knowledge” (1937) and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) – to this list.

I conceive of institutional and economic development as a path-dependent evolutionary process that is unlikely to lead toward any kind of global optimum. Nonetheless, there are certain general features that characterize societies that have been relatively successful in terms of human survival, subjective well-being, and material resources. These features include the rule of law, tolerance or encouragement of entrepreneurial trial and error, and an absence of rigid caste or class divisions.