Stefan Kolev is the Academic Director of the Ludwig Erhard Forum for Economy and Society in Berlin and a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau, Germany.

His research focuses on the history of economic thought, especially ordoliberalism, Austrian economics and the German historical school, as well as the applicability of historical insights on the politico-economic problems in today’s Western democracies. He has written extensively on the history of constitutional and institutional economics as well as the notion of neoliberalism in mid-20th-century political economy. More recently he explores the genealogy of ordoliberalism in 19th-century German economic thought, especially in the tradition of the German Historical School and the economic sociology of Max Weber. He is co-editor of the ORDO Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft and of the Journal of Contextual Economics – Schmollers Jahrbuch. He spent his earlier sabbatical semesters at the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University and at the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington. While at Princeton, he will be working on a biography of Austrian economist and social philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek, as well as on the history of social policy in German economic thought as a tool to pacify polarized societies.

Stefan received his diplomas in Economics and Business Administration as well as his PhD in Economics from the University of Hamburg.