Asgeir Jonsson is an Icelandic economist, teacher and author. Jonsson has been a notable contributor to the Icelandic policy debate during the boom and crisis periods. He is the son of Jon Bjarnason

Jón Bjarnason

Jón Bjarnason is a member of parliament of the Althing, the Icelandic parliament. He is a member of the Left-Green Movement and is Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries.-External links:*...

, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (2009-present).

Career

Currently, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Iceland

University of Iceland

The University of Iceland is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern comprehensive university, providing instruction for about...

, Jonsson was during the 2000s the Chief economist

Chief economist

The Chief Economist is a single position job class having primary responsibility for the development, coordination, and production of economic and financial analysis...

 for Kaupthing Bank

Kaupthing Bank

Kaupthing Bank was an international Icelandic bank, headquartered in Reykjavík, Iceland. It was formed by the merger of Kaupthing and Búnaðarbanki Íslands in 2003 and was the largest bank in Iceland....

 and head of its analytic department. After the Icelandic banking collapse he wrote a book on the crisis

Education

Asgeir Jonsson received a BS degree in economics from the University of Iceland in 1994. He received the M.Sc. degree in economics from Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

in 1997 and the PhD degree from the same university in 2001.

Policy debate

Danielsson and Jonsson (2005) addressed a problem in monetary policy associated with an appreciation of the exchange rate for the purpose of price stability which could perversely lead to increased financial instability by reducing the amount of regulatory capital. To counter this they suggested requiring bank capital arising from foreign currency lending to be denominated in the same foreign currency. Capital charges on bank lending would then also make monetary policy more effective as a counter-cyclical policy tool.

External links

• Webpage at University of Iceland