Bo Södersten has passed away

Bo Södersten passed away at the age of 86 on September 5. He was a professor at our department 1971-1977.

Bo studied at Uppsala and Stockholm, where Ingvar Svennilson was his most important teacher and supervisor. In 1961-1962 he was at MIT and University of California, Berkeley, and in 1964 he defended his doctoral thesis A Study of Economic Growth and International Trade at Stockholm University. This was a monograph which influenced his later textbook International Economics, which was internationally successful with several editions in several languages.

When Bo was at our department, it was quite different from now. The department had only two professors - the other was Harald Dickson - and in the whole country there were less than twenty. Bo was a specialist in international economics, but like most others of his generation, he was in his daily work rather a "general practitioner", especially in the public debate in which he keenly participated.

After the years in Gothenburg, Bo moved to a chair in international economics in Lund but he was on leave for almost a decade as he in 1979 was elected member of the Parliament as a social democrat. In 1998 he was affiliated with Jönköping University at the same time as his wife Birgit Friggebo became county governor of the County of Jönköping. When she left her office, they moved to Stockholm.