Johan Henrik Åkerman (31 March 1896 in Stockholm – July 12, 1982) was a Swedish economist and was a Professor of Economics and Statistics at Lund University.
He became PhD in 1929 with a thesis about the economic life rhythm which was the first Swedish dissertation that contained elements of econometrics.
Åkerman's attempts to formulate a theory would involve incorporating a prescient concern with an endogenous business cycle theory reliant in part upon seasonal cycles which, he argued, were correlated with and could propagate large and longer economic swings.
Åkerman's "causal association" (1931) theory is a precedent to very recent work on seasonal cycles.
Åkerman also pursued more expansive work In his two monumental volumes on economic theory (1939, 1944), he attempts a sweeping theory of historical and structural change and how that, in turn, determines specific economic phenomena.