Background
LINDAHL, Erik Robert was born in 1891 in Stockholm, Sweden.
LINDAHL, Erik Robert was born in 1891 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dr University Lund, 1919.
Lindahl, along with Swedish economists Myrdal and Bertil Ohlin, furthered Wicksell’s monetary theory by applying it to conditions other than full employment. Lindahl also developed the benefit principle in taxation, described in his book Die Gerechtigkeit der Besteuerung (1919; “The Justness of Taxation”). That principle holds that each person’s share of taxes paid for government-provided goods and services should equal the share of benefits each person receives. Lindahl argued that not only would such a payment scale be just and fair, but it would also lead to the optimum levels of government provision.
In elaborating this principle, Lindahl built on an idea originally set forth by Wicksell. He also advanced Wicksell’s development of the Austrian economic school’s theory of capital. He was interested in the development of economic accounting systems that would have general validity, and he made statistical studies of income and prices.
Studies in the Theory of Money and Capital(1939)
Die Gerechtigkeit der Besteuerung (1919) (German, translated as Just Taxation: A positive solution, 1958)
Political economics