Background

Mathias Binswanger was born on October 10, 1962, in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland to the family of economist Hans Christoph Binswanger. The well-known psychiatrist and founder of the Daseinsanalysis Ludwig Binswanger is his great-uncle.

Education

Binswanger first enrolled at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich studying chemistry, which he stopped after two semesters, after which he began to study economics at the University of Sankt Gallen and graduated with a licentiate in 1988. He received his doctorate from the University of Kassel and again habilitated at the University of Sankt Gallen in 1999.

Career

In 1998 Mathias Binswanger was appointed professor by the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.

Binswanger was a visiting professor and lecturer at various universities, such as the University of Basel, the Technical University Freiberg in Germany, the Qingdao Technological University, and Lanzhou University in China and the Banking University in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Mathias Binswanger publishes both in specialist journals and in the press. From 2011 he wrote a column every two months in the Marktplatz section for the Swiss magazine Schweizer Monat, and until 2015 he wrote a column on economic trends for the magazine Bilanz. Since 2019 he has been writing regular posts for the blog Never mind the markets, which appears in the Tagesanzeiger, Berner Zeitung, and Basler Zeitung. He is the author of the 2006 book Die Tretmühlen des Glücks, which became a bestseller in Switzerland. In September 2010, Sinnlose Wettbewerbe appeared, in March 2015 the book Money out of Geld aus dem Nichts and in 2019 Der Wachstumszwang.

Achievements

• Mathias Binswanger enjoys a long and successful academic career in the economy. According to the economist influence ranking of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he has been one of the most influential economists in Switzerland for years and was most often cited by politicians in 2019 as a source of inspiration.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Stock Markets, Speculative Bubbles and Economic Growth: New Dimensions in the Co-evolution of Real and Financial Markets

    (This book sheds new light on the role of speculative bubb...)

    1999
  • Sinnlose Wettbewerbe: Warum wir immer mehr Unsinn produzieren 2010
  • Die Tretmühlen des Glücks: Wir haben immer mehr und werden nicht glücklicher. Was können wir tun? 2006
  • Geld aus dem Nichts: Wie Banken Wachstum ermöglichen und Krisen verursachen 2015
  • Der Wachstumzwang 2019
  • Mehr Wohlstand durch weniger Agrarfreihandel: Landwirtschaft und Globalisierung 2020

Views

Mathias Binswanger takes credit for establishing the growth imperative of modern market economies by making the link between money creation and firms’ profits. If Binswanger’s strictly positive minimal steady-state growth solution is binding, so is the minimal growth derived from the money creation rule but the reverse is not true. In other words, it is sufficient to consider the money creation rule for the feasible solutions in his model; the link between firms’ profits and money creation is missing. Nevertheless, the basic message of his model is not discredited: there is a growth imperative in capitalist economies regardless of risk considerations.

Connections

There is no information on whether Mathias Binswanger is married or has any children.

Father:

Hans Christoph Binswanger

Great-uncle:

Ludwig Binswanger

References

• Mathias Binswanger
• Auf dem Weg zu einer allgemeinen Theorie des Glücks: Eine Bestandsaufnahme der Glücksforschung
  2010
• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: Volume 212
  2011