Christensen, Lars

He is known for his no-nonsense, out-of-the-box views and as a lively and opinionated speaker. Lars Christensen worked five years as an economic policy analyst at the Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs (1996-2001). He has a master degree in Economics from the University of Copenhagen (1994). Lars is particularly known for having been Head of Emerging Markets Research at Danske Bank in Copenhagen. In this role he authored numerous path-breaking economic reports on particularly Central and Eastern Europe. In 2006-8 Lars co-authored a number of reports warning of a coming economic meltdown in Central and Eastern Europe and maybe most famously Lars co-authored the report “Geyser Crisis” in 2006, which correctly forecasted a major economic and financial crisis in Iceland. Lars Christensen is the author of the book “Milton Friedman – en pragmatisk revolutionær” (“Milton Friedman – a pragmatic revolutionary”) published in November 2002. He has contributed to numerous other books. Lars Christensen is internationally recognized as a specialist on the economic teachings of Milton Friedman and the history of monetary thought. Lars also blogs at marketmonetarist.com. His blog The Market Monetarist has since it was started in 2011 become one of the leading international blogs on monetary policy. Lars has coined the name Market Monetarism. Market Monetarism is a new school of economic thought that has emerged primarily in the blogosphere. Market Monetarists like Lars advocate that central banks should target the nominal GDP level (NGDP level targeting). Furthermore, Lars has a strong interest in monetary policy for commodity exporting countries and he is advocating that commodity exporting countries could benefit from introducing what he has termed an Export Price Norm (EPN), where the commodity exporting country is pegging its exchange rate to a basket of currencies and the price of the commodity the country exports. Lars has been advising governments of oil exporting countries on monetary matters. Lars Christensen also sits on the Advisory Board of the Maghreb Economic Forum in Tunisia and as well on the Advisory Board of Swicorp. Lars is widely quoted by most international financials media – Financial Times, The Telegraph Bloomberg, Reuters, Dow Jones Newswire etc. Lars writes a weekly column for the Icelandic newspaper Fréttablaðið and he is a regular contributor to the Danish Business Daily Børsen as well as to Geopolitical Information Service.