Peter Bofinger (born September 18, 1954) is a German economist and a former member of the German Council of Economic Experts.

Career

Following his studies, Bofinger worked as staff member to the Council of Economic Experts between 1978 and 1981. From 1984 until 1990, he was an economist at the Bundesbank. Since 1992, Bofinger has been a professor at the University of Würzburg. Between 1997 and 1999, he served as Dean of the university’s Department of Economics.

Council of Economic Experts

Nominated by Germany’s trade unions, Bofinger succeeded Jürgen Kromphardt as member of the Council of Economic Experts in 2004. He has in the past oftentimes disagreed with the Council’s conclusions. During the period between 2012 and 2017, he issued 26 of the Council’s 27 minority votes. Among Bofinger's solitary dissensions to established policy was his 2010 advocacy for the adoption in Germany of a minimum hourly wage of 6 Euros, revising upwards his previous proposal for 4,50 Euros. In 2013, he argued that a "five percent [wage] increase across all sectors" is necessary to prevent "wage dumping" and ensure that full-time employment provides "enough income," stressing his disagreement with the dominant position that a minimum wage would have a negative impact on employment. In 2005, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder proposed that Bofinger should replace Otmar Issing on the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) the following year; the post eventually went to economist Jürgen Stark. From December 2011 until May 2012, Bofinger served in the Jacques Delors Institute’s Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa group, established by the Jacques Delors Institute with the task of "reflect[ing] on the reform of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union."

Fiscal policy in the European Union

Boifinger has written extensively on the need for European Union-wide state investment to combat the effects of climate change. In this, he acknowledges the obstacle that stands in the way of the required fiscal policy. That obstacle, Bofinger writes, is the "mindset, which says that governments must not borrow, they must not add to the national debt, and they must not spend more than they receive in revenue;" in other words, a bias against budget deficits, which calls for zero deficits, a target named in Germany Schwarze Null, or Black Zero. The bias comes from historical experience, he explains, such as the 1920's hyper inflation period, but it is not exclusive to Germany. In fact, it is taught in standard economic texts in almost all economics classes around the world. In the same vein, Bofinger denounces the "arbitrary" and baseless criteria for fiscal policy set down by the Maastricht Treaty, such as limiting state debt to a maximum of 60% of yearly GDP.

Dissent on Nobel award

Bofinger criticized the awarding of the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig as "[a] noble award for a ‘popular misconception’", because the award committee's description of banking ("they receive money from people making deposits and channel it to borrowers" ) has been refuted by at least two major central banks, the Bank of England and the Deutsche Bundesbank.

Selected publications

Other activities

Non-profit organizations

Editorial boards