Born 1981 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Stefan Kolev studied economics and business administration at the University of Hamburg. In 2011 he defended his PhD thesis in economics at the University of Hamburg on the history and political economy of neoliberalism. During his studies and PhD studies he was fellow of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.
Since March 2012 Stefan Kolev has been professor of political economy at the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau. In 2015 he co-founded the Network for Constitutional Economics and Social Philosophy NOUS, Freiburg, and is a member of international associations dedicated to the history of economic thought and to liberal political economy. He spent sabbatical semesters at the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University, the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington and the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
Stefan Kolev’s research focuses on the history of economic thought, especially ordoliberalism, Austrian economics and the German Historical School, on constitutional and institutional economics, and on economic sociology, especially 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.
Since March 2023 Stefan Kolev has been the academic director of the Ludwig Erhard Forum for Economy and Society in Berlin.