Bernd Lucke

Bernd Lucke (born 19 August 1962) is a German economist and politician. Lucke was elected a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in 2014. He failed to win reelection in 2019. He is a professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, a co-founder of Wahlalternative 2013 ("Electoral Alternative 2013"), and a founder of the party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Lucke lost the leadership of the AfD to Frauke Petry in July 2015. Petry's election was considered a shift of the party to extremist positions; Lucke subsequently left the party. In July 2015 he and other former AfD members founded the political party Liberal-Konservative Reformer (formerly Allianz für Fortschritt und Aufbruch, "Alliance for progress and renewal", abbreviated ALFA). Biography From 1982 to 1984, Lucke studied economics, history, and philosophy at the University of Bonn; he undertook graduate studies in economics at the University of Bonn and UC Berkeley from 1984 to 1987. He completed his doctorate in 1991 with a dissertation on price stabilization in world agricultural markets under Jürgen Wolters at Free University of Berlin. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he worked in the Council of Economic Experts of the East German Government and, after the German reunification, as an assistant to the Senate of Berlin. Lucke's research interests include sovereign default, news-driven business cycles, growth in developing countries, dynamic CGE models, and applied econometrics. Lucke has been an advisor to the World Bank and a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is a frequent guest on political talk shows in Germany. He is married and has five children.