Joseph Schumpeter in Sweden

Abstract

Different aspects of Schumpeter's relationship with Sweden are explored in this article. Schumpeter visited Sweden a few times in the inter-war period in his capacity of well-known economist. During World War I he also wished to go to Sweden to gather information that would be of assistance to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Schumpeter refered occasionally to Sweden in his writings, usually as a symbol for socialism and as a threat to capitalism. However, he failed to recognise that Sweden also had a vigorous tradition of entrepreneurship, as exemplified by the Wallenberg family and the Rausings. Schumpeter's view of Swedish economists is also discussed, as is the extent to which Swedish economists have been influenced by Schumpeter.     

Economic history research in Sweden since the mid-1970s

Abstract

In the Swedish university system, economic history forms an independent subject falling within the faculty of social sciences. Professorships in the subject were established at Stockholm, Gothenburg, Uppsala, Lund and Umeå between the end of the 1940s and the end of the 1960s. A second chair was established at Lund in 1988. Furthermore, resources have been increased step by step through the addition of other kinds of teaching and research services, including a lectureship at Örebro. Teachers from departments of economic history give tuition not only within the bounds of their own subject but also as components of lengthy courses of professional training, for example, for history teachers and economists. AU the departments in the subject provide research training leading to writing of dissertations in economic history. Most of them also offer a licentiate examination as an intermediate stage on the way.     

The creation of big business in the Swedish brewing industry during the aftermath of the Second World War

Abstract

Before the First World War, the Swedish brewing industry was organised into cartels that fixed prices and established distribution areas. During the inter-war years, the major combines in the three biggest cities strengthened their position, since they controlled the market in the most populated areas. Because of the agreements within the brewing cartel Bryggeriidkareförbundet, there was hardly any competition among the breweries and the only way to expand the business was to buy cartel-associated smaller breweries in the fixed ‘natural distribution area’. When the cartel ceased to exist in the mid 1950s, the agreements among AB Stockholms Bryggerier in Stockholm (StB), AB Pripp & Lyckholm in Göteborg (P&L) and AB Malmö Förenade Bryggerier in Malmö (MfB) were informally maintained. They managed to expand in their old distribution areas and beyond, but there was no interference in each other's home market.

This article examines why and how these agreements finally came to an end and the effects of the increased competition. The so-called ‘beer war’ between StB and P&L during the early sixties paved the way for negotiations, which in the end led to a merger of the breweries and a new big combine – Pripps – was created. We take up questions related to the formation of the company, its market expansion, the diversification and other organisational strategies. Pripps's monopolistic position on the Swedish market and the institutional pressure that followed started a process leading in the end to a reorganisation and a holding company, PRIBO, was formed in the early 1970s. A few years later the majority of PRIBO's brewing division (Pripps) was bought by the Swedish state and the rest of PRIBO was sold to one of the upcoming holding companies in Sweden during that time – Beijer Invest.     

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.

     

Svenskt arbete och liv

Abstract

Among Eli F. Heckscher's works on economic history, his Merkantilismen (first published in Swedish, 1931) and Sveriges ekonomiska historia från Gustav Vasa (1935-50) are the most significant.     

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     

The Birkarlians in the melting pot

Abstract

In 1924 the Finnish historian, Jalmari Jaakkola, published a study Pirkkalaisliikkeen synty (The Birth of the Birkarlian Movement) in which he argued convincingly for the theory that the Birkarlians (Pirkkalaiset), who lived in the sixteenth century in the northernmost corner of the Gulf of Bothnia and levied taxes on the Lapps, were of Finnish origin. In Jaakkola's opinion, the Birkarlians were the successors of even older west-Finnish armed Lapland-farers, the men of Kainuu, who from at least the thirteenth century onwards made long hunting treks, chiefly from the parish of Pirkkala (Birkala) in Upper Satakunta, into Lapland and along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and gradually subjected a great proportion of the Lapps to taxation. This theory has been generally accepted in Finnish historical literature, and a number of Swedish scholars have even given it their blessing with minor reservations.¹ In the summer of 1964, six months after the death of Professor Jaakkola, a complete surprise was sprung from the Swedish side. Birger Steckzén, former keeper of Sweden's military archives, published a 500-page work entitled Birkarlar och lappar (Birkarlians and Lapps). In it, he tried to refute the Finnish theory and made the Birkarlians of the Far North into Swedes. The Swedish word 'birkarls', in his opinion, is an archaic form of the ‘biurkarl’ (biur = beaver in Old Swedish). The Birkarls, i.e. beavermen, were thus, he claimed, Swedish beaver trappers who subjugated the whole of Lapland in the early Middle Ages.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

Dr. Utterström's dissertation completes the large project initiated in the 1930s under the auspices, and mainly at the expense, of Landsorganisationen (the Swedish TUC): the production of a comprehensive history of the Swedish working classes.Throughout the undertaking basic research in public and private archives has been necessary, the source material having been used before only to a very limited extent. The final work comprises 12 volumes, written by nine authors, including some of Sweden's leading political scientists and economic historians. This investigation of working class history became one of the main themes of Swedish research in social and economic history for several years; it has accordingly affected the direction of that research in several important respects.     

The Contribution of Economists to Understanding Racial Health Disparities in the US

Much research on the issue of health disparities in the United States has been produced by health services researchers across disciplines, particularly medical care providers, public health workers and sociologists. Many economists have also studied health disparities. This special issue of Atlantic Economic Journal highlights in particular the role of economic scholarship in this important national debate. This article, introducing the special issue, categorizes the contribution of many economists to the literature on health disparity. The literature reviewed ultimately includes 107 articles published between 1998 and 2008. Articles by any of the 932 economists that were members of the American Society of Health Economists in 2006 publishing about racial/ethnic health disparities as found in Medline, articles related to racial/ethnic health disparities published in Health Economics or the Journal of Health Economics or through searches in EconLit were reviewed for inclusion.     

The general strike in Sweden 1909

Abstract

This book deals with the events leading up to the great Swedish labour conflict of 1909, which began in June of that year with an extensive lockout by the three national employers' associations led by the newly formed confederation of big industrial concerns, Svenska Arbetsgivare Förening (SAF), and was extended on 4 August by the Swedish Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen or LO) into a general strike involving 300,000 workers. By 4 September the trade unions were compelled to look for a way of terminating the conflict. After the defeat they had consequently lost half their members by 1910. The employers' organisations were then able to ensure peace on the labour market right up to 1917. Nevertheless they accepted the principle of collective bargaining, although they did not achieve the basic general agreement with established negotiating procedure which had been their aim in the struggle of 1909.     

Origin and rise of the crofter problem in Finland

Abstract

Crofters (Swedish torpare, Finnish torppari) are in Finland and Sweden the peasants whose principal means of subsistence derived from the cultivation of some small part, held in tenancy, of an estate. The crofter paid the bulk of his rent by putting in so many days work on the parent farm.     

Swedish artisans in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The history of the artisan class and of the gild system in Sweden has been dealt with in a number of works, such as Professor E. Heckscher's Sveriges ekonomiska historia [The Economic History of Sweden] and in two of the volumes of the great work of Landsorganisationen ¹ Landsorganisationen, popularly known as ‘L.O’, the Swedish equivalent of the T.U.C. : Den svenska arbetarklassens historia [History of the Swedish Working Class], as well as in Professor E. Söderlund's Stockholms hantverkarklass 1720–1772 [The Artisan Class of Stockholm, 1720–1772]. These topics are of course also touched upon in histories of towns and other literature. However, in those studies which cover the whole country the subject has only been pursued to the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th. The subsequent period is discussed in Henry Lindström's two books Näringsfrihetens utveckling i Sverige 1809–1836 and Näringsirihetsirågan i Sverige 1837–1864 [The Development of Industrial Freedom in Sweden, 1809–1836, and The Problem of Industrial Freedom in Sweden, 1837–1864], but only from a special point of view. Thanks, however, to the good offices of Sveriges hantuerks- och småindustriorgonisation (The Swedish Craft and Minor Industries Organisation), an attempt has now been made, in a work by Dr. Tom Söderberg that has been in preparation for some time, to fill the gap thus existing in respect of the period after 1815. The result, in spite of the relatively limited number of pages, is a very comprehensive exposition, even if the subject obviously cannot be exhausted within the given frame of reference.     

Tariff protection in Sweden, 1885–1914

Abstract

The Swedish finance company crisis was a kind of “run” that happened in September, 1990. It marked the beginning of the Swedish banking crisis of the early 1990s. The crisis was initially focused on the finance company Nyckeln. The specific negative information about Nyckeln is identified, and so is the extreme lateness with which it reached, if at all, the supervisory authority and the banks that were involved in lending to the finance companies. The paper then inquires whether there were warning signs of the forthcoming crisis in capital market and other public information, by means of the usual event study methodology. The data employed include indices for the banking industry and the real estate and construction industry, and share prices and trading volume for finance companies. The conclusion is that the crisis really came as a surprise, with very little advance warning.     

Patterns of concentration in the newspaper industry

Abstract

This short paper, presented in 1967 as a thesis, is a resume of seven rather more specialised articles by the same author, together with some conclusions drawn from them. The original articles, running to 253 pages, described the concentration which has taken place in the structure of the Swedish press since 1945, resulting in a reduction of at least one-third in the number of daily newspapers and in the replacement, to a large extent, of fierce competition by local quasi-monopolies. The purely factual events were already known in some detail, in particular from the report of the Investigation into the Press (SOU 1965: 22) for which the author's own efforts were largely responsible. He is also responsible for the view, which rounds off his analysis of the structural development of the Swedish press, that growth and decline in newspapers are the result of a self-generated process of increasing strength within given marketing areas (e.g. local districts), the interaction of circulation, advertising and revenue automatically ensuring a continual increase in the lead of the largest paper until it finally eliminates its weaker competitors. This process is called by the author ‘the circulation spiral’ (upplagespiralen). The principle can be recognised in various forms in recent developments in the press of many western countries. Attention has been drawn to it by the present reviewer in connection with the even higher mortality rate in the Danish press, and it would appear to be relevant to the study of other branches of the economy.     

Swedish foreign trade in the mid-sixteenth century

Abstract

For many years our image of economic conditions in 16th-century Sweden has been that depicted by Eli F. Heckscher: a medieval economy, reorganised by a central government of increasing authority in the person of King Gustav Vasa, and gradually transformed after his death in 1560. Sweden's foreign trade appeared to Heckscher as a particular example of his general rule. Its role in the national economy as a whole was very small: such commodities as were imported in exchange for exports were for the most part luxury goods; the only notable exception was the import of salt, to which Heckscher assigned extreme importance, because a vast consumption of salted food featured in his concept of the Swedish ‘medieval’ pattern of overall consumption. Heckscher saw no reason to postulate any major changes in the form and direction of Swedish trade during the reign of Gustav Vasa himself (1521–60); on the contrary, a theme vigorously argued in his book is that the political liberation of Sweden from the influence of Liibeck in the 1530s did not produce any shift of trade routes: most Swedish foreign trade still went via Lübeck. The customs ledgers of a single year, 1559, had an important influence on Heckscher's views.     

SEHR & IEHA — the early years

Abstract

In January 1952, Professor Astrid Friis asked me to accompany her and our colleague Aksel E Christensen to Stockholm for the inaugural meeting of a closed circle of Nordic historians who had set themselves the task of publishing an English-language journal of economic history. The meeting was arranged by Professor Ernst Söderlund. By way of introduction he brought us greetings from Eli F Heckscher, who by his work and debating ability had done more than anyone else to create respect for the subject of economic history in Sweden, and whose name was also renowned internationally thanks in part to his book on mercantilism. His latest achievement was the second volume of his mammoth work of Swedish economic history. Heckscher was in hospital at the time and died shortly afterwards. Thus it came about that the torch was passed on, but still it was clear that the Heckscher era was ebbing to its close.     

中国流通经济学的回顾与反思

流通经济学是中国经济学界尤其是流通理论界一直致力创建的一门应用经济学。然而,20余年过去了,流通经济学却始终未能建立起来,而且随着经济环境的变化,反而日益走向贫困化。作者从西方经济学的学术传统和发展轨迹,从流通自身演变和发展的规律,从中国经济改革实践的背景转换等多个角度,对流通经济学的学术地位、中国流通经济学的演变历程和发展出路进行了全方位的分析和检讨。提出了不同于主流意见的创新性观点。     

Swedish trade unions and the social democratic party: The formative years

Abstract

The history of labour movements in many countries of the Western world includes a period in which the relationship between the trade-union arm and the political arm undergoes significant change. This formative period is conditioned in an immediate way by the political framework and more generally by the economic and social milieu. In respect of the actors themselves—trade unions and party organisations—latter-day interpreters have frequently regarded developments of union-party relationships as a process in which the unions, to the extent they are successful and true to their character and objectives as trade unions, free themselves from party domination. ¹ The most obvious example is found in the works of the late Professor Selig Perlman, especially his A Theory of the Labor Movement, (New York, 1928). It is recognised here that Perlman did not discuss Swedish developments. The historical fragment which follows is intended to demonstrate that, for the Swedish experience, such an interpretation leaves much to be desired.     

In defence of Heckscher and the idea of Mercantilism

Abstract

In his recent reappraisal of Heckscher's Mercantilism ² Dr. Coleman raised certain questions concerning Heckscher's methodological approach which transcend the immediate problem of the nature and validity of the idea of ‘mercantilism’ and have a bearing upon the broader issue of the relationships between economic conditions, ideas and policy. To the present writer, the danger that Heckscher's development of the idea of mercantilism will drive yet another wedge between the political and the economic historians as Dr. Coleman fears,³ is less serious than the danger that Heckscher's apparent reluctance to admit the influence of economic conditions upon economic ideas,⁴ and his readiness to pass directly from generalizations about economic ideas to generalizations about economic policy, will widen the existing gap between economic historians and historians of economic doctrine, two groups of scholars whose mutual services should be considerable. To the student of economic ideas who seeks to rescue his discipline from the sterile pursuit of tracing the genealogy of particular analytic propositions, of which some of his colleagues seem inordinately fond, the matter is one of crucial importance.     

Carin Israelsson,Kor och människor. Nötkreatursskötsel och besättningsstorlekar på torp och herrgårdar 1850–1914

Abstract

During the 18th and the early 19th centuries there was one main dynamic factor in the Swedish economy: the merchant houses of Stockholm and Gothenburg. Their dynamic power derived from their especial role in capital accumulation and in international credit movements. Many of these houses were at that time helping to finance the Swedish iron industry. Later, during the industrial revolution, many of them were to make decisive contributions, as entrepreneurs, financiers and exporters, to the building of the Swedish forest industries. Not until then did their true dynamic power make itself felt; before the industrial revolution the generally stationary state of the economy had prevented any significant number of innovations. But in so far as there were innovations in the economic life of pre-industrial Sweden, they were due to these merchant houses.