Corn-price rises and equalisation: Real wages in stockholm 1650–1719

Abstract

The period between the price revolution of the sixteenth century and the long inflation which set in around 1730 was marked over large tracts of Europe by stable or even falling prices and rising real wages.¹ The features of stagnation and defensive adaptation are often pointed out by way of contrast with the pronounced economic and demographic expansion of the preceding and succeeding periods.²     

The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis and Air Pollution in Finland

Abstract

The historiography of mercantilism has been described as a series of disconnected still pictures which reflect the shifting viewpoints of economic thought.¹ However, historians have favoured different concepts of mercantilism not only in response to the shifts of economic science but also because they have held, explicitly or implicitly, different opinions on the problem of how economic ideas are formed and of the role they have played in historical development. The following reexamination of some of those ‘stills’ concentrate on such differences.²     

Italian colonialism in Eritrea 1882–1941

Abstract

When did Eritrean nationalism emerge? Did it emerge during Italian rule, between 1882 and 1941, or was it a later phenomenon? In other words, does Italian colonialism have any impact on Eritrean nationalism? This is the central question which Tekeste Negash's dissertation raises and attempts to resolve.¹     

The rise af savings banks in Schleswig

Abstract

This survey of the history of the North Schleswig savings banks is published in connection with the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Senderborg Bys Sparekasse, Thanks to his connection with the province concerned and his earlier academic work.¹ the author is well qualified for a task demanding extensive knowledge and understanding of the special conditions of North Schleswig.     

Sweden's iron ore exports to Germany, 1933–1944

Abstract

Rolf Karlbom's article about Swedish iron ore exports to Germany during the Nazi era¹ is an attempt to examine a very important problem as yet unsolved—the significance of the Swedish ore deliveries to Germany. His study begins with the following two questions:² 1. ‘How much of the total consumption of this raw material by German industry did Swedish ore cover during these years?’

2. ‘How far was access to Swedish iron ore a sine qua non for the continuance of the armaments programme?’

3. These basic questions indicate the main problems. Karlbom's answers to them are not wholly convincing because of some weaknesses in his approach.

     

A chronology of cycles in real economic activity for Norway, 1867–1914

Abstract

Business cycles, defined as “recurrent sequences of persistent and pervasive expansions and contractions in economic activities”¹, have been a distinctive feature of the experience of capitalist countries as far back as our historical records on aggregate economic activity go. Indeed, Schumpeter maintained that “[a]nalyzing business cycles means neither more nor less than analyzing the economic process of the capitalist era … Cycles are not, like tonsils, separable things that might be treated by themselves, but are, like the beat of the heart, of the essence of the organism that displays them”.²     

Price formation in the Danish stock market in the 1890s

Abstract

Trading¹ in stocks has a fairly long history in Denmark. It dates back to the end of the 17th century at least, as evidenced by M?glemes Articler from 1684, where one can find information about brokerage fees for sales and purchases of shares of the East Asian, West Asian and other chartered trading companies. In the beginning of the 18th century, newspapers started carrying information about transactions in stocks. Stock exchange price quotes were listed in the newspapers fairly regularly from around 1760.     

Macroeconomic history in Sweden

Abstract

The term macrohistory can have reference to the overall history of large units, e.g. world development during the last two hundred years, or European history in the Middle Ages. Another example is the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Yet another is the macrohistorical problem posed by Jones in a recently-published book. He pursues the thesis that tendencies to economic growth have been present in most societies but that for various reasons they have been prevented from becoming more than just tendencies: “Why Europe rather than China?”¹     

The state and economic development in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Abstract

In the search for a “development theory”, during the 1950s and 1960s economists on the whole gave only limited consideration to the behavior of the state. Interest was mainly focused on the role of such factors as capital accumulation, education, transfer of technology, trade strategies etc in the development process. When the state entered the analysis, emphasis was usually put on its positive contribution to development: the state provides infrastructure and overhead capital, it corrects for externalities and designs overall development plans.¹     

Serfdom in esthonia during the period of Swedish rule

Abstract

For quite some time after World War II peasant behavior in less developed countries was ‘unproblematic’. There was a general consensus that peasants were not ‘economic men’, in the sense that they tried to maximize profits as postulated by mainstream economic theory. Instead, their acts were assumed to be governed by ‘tradition’, or ‘conservatism’, which by and large had nothing to do with the type of maximizing or minimizing behavior which acquired prominence in economic theory not least by the central role that was conferred on it in Paul Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis.¹ Their ambitions and horizons were thought to be limited in such a way as to render standard economic theory inapplicable in the study of peasant behavior. The discussion focused on the ‘inert’, or ‘lazy’, (satisficing) peasant.²     

Book Review

Abstract

The importance of Swedish iron ore to the re-armament and wartime economy of Nazi Germany has been touched upon in a number of writings about the international politics of the period here under review. Erik Lonnroth has demonstrated how the question of continued ore deliveries constituted the flashpoint of Swedish-German relations during the 1930s.¹ Gunnar Häggläf describes the Swedish Foreign Office's balancing act between English and German desires in regard to the ore trade, and their role in the regulating of trade with the two belligerents in the autumn of 1939.² Magne Skodvin has explored the strategic and economic aspects of the attack on Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940.³     

Population mobility in the Netherlands 1880–1910. A case study of Wisch in the Achterhoek

Abstract

In the last two decades, migration as 3. phenomenon has been studied intensively and scientifically. Apart from migration in general, Scandinavian scholars have taken a special interest in the great flood of emigration during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A large number of dissertations and other studies have described and analysed the phenomenon. Samson's work on emigration and mobility must be seen in this context, having started as a dissertation within the project ‘Sweden and America after 1860’, commonly referred to as the Emigration Research Project.¹     

Ultimate and proximate growth causality: A critique of Mancur Olson on the rise and decline of nations1

Abstract

In the past three decades analysis of the “proximate” causes of economic growth has been greatly enriched by both theoretical developments and quantitative studies. Technocratic supply-side growth accounts are available in considerable sophistication and detail,² but analysis of deeper causality is still rare.     

Corruption and civic order — natural law and economic discourse in Sweden during the age of freedom

Abstract

Views on the history of economic thought have changed during recent decades, with regard both to content and to how it should be written. This special discipline was formerly dominated by an approach that was in principle anachronistic: modern economic theory functioned as the starting point and was projected backwards in time. The task of the history of economic thought was to depict the gradual perfecting of concepts and theories — the “box of tools” of which Schumpeter spoke.¹     

On women's history and economic history

Abstract

Women's history at the university level can be seen as an interdisciplinary movement, with researchers working in disciplines other than history itself, such as the history of ideas, sociology, anthropology and literature, among others. My initial wish here was to give a broad overview of the state of women's history in Sweden today, but this would have involved too long a discourse.¹ But it needs to be stressed that the connections across the usual boundaries of the academic disciplines are many.²     

American shipping in the trade with Northern Europe 1783–1860

Abstract

As early as 1741 an American ship passed through the narrow waters of the Sound on its way to some port in the Baltic. Danish officials collected the traditional toll and recorded the fact in their account book. This was probably the first North American ship to visit the Baltic sea. The Danish records of ships passing the Sound indicate that altogether fifteen vessels declaring their home ports to be in the British North American colonies were reported before the American Revolution. The last of these was a Nantucket ship in the fateful year of 1776.²     

Relief works,the world bank and private business:

Abstract

In an extended review of the arguments advanced by Mancur Olson concerning the economic rise and decline of nations Angus Maddison drew an interesting distinction between ultimate and proximate causality which implicitly invited consideration of both the nature of the discipline of economic history and the key causal factors influencing the rate of economic growth in both the short and long run.¹ To my knowledge nobody has taken the opportunity to build upon this distinction, although sustained analyses of deeper causality are less rare than when Maddison was writing.²     

The population of Denmark, 1660–1960

Abstract

The most important sources for the study of population trends in Denmark from 1660 to 1801 are the somewhat crude but fairly well preserved Census of Peasants¹ (compiled in the autumn of 1660), the incomplete census of 1769,² and the very reliable population census of 1801.³ If the reliability of the first two of these censuses can be evaluated and their defects remedied, it ought to be possible to verify the pattern of demographic development in the intervening period parish by parish, herred by herred or province by province, by reference to parish registers and records of births and deaths. For it may be assumed that the aggregate growth of the kingdom's population did not significantly exceed the aggregate excess of births over deaths.     

Swedish ball-bearings and The German war economy

Abstract

Sweden's export of ball-bearings to Germany during the Second World War attracted remarkably intensive international attention even at the time. Historians have also shown a great deal of interest in these transactions: the export of ball-bearings has rightly been regarded as a kind of barometer of Swedish wartime commercial policy. ¹     

Pre-Industrial economic growth

Abstract

Karl Gunnar Persson has written a small book on a large subject — pre-industrial societies and technological progress.¹ For a book on economic history it is unusual, mainly because of the high level of abstraction on which it moves, but also because of some of the conclusions it reaches.