Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen

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    Before the ‘European Miracles’. Four Essays on Swedish Preconditions for Conquest, Growth, and Voice
    (2005) Emilsson, Erik Örjan; Department of Economic History
    Abstract Before the ‘European Miracles’. Four Essays on Swedish Preconditions for Conquest, Growth, and Voice. (Publications of the Department of Economic History, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg university no 93) ISSN 1403-2864. ISBN 91-85196-61-4 Göteborg 2005 Author: Erik Örjan Emilsson Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Economic History, Göteborg University. (Written in English). Distribution: the Department of Economic History, Göteborg University, Box 720, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. This thesis consists of four studies that further develop the perspectives introduced in the author’s licential dissertation, Sweden and the European Miracles: Conquest, Growth and Voice (1996). The dynamic properties of the European system of independent but interacting societies are traced back to the institutional polystruc-turality of European feudalism and the peculiarities of Sweden’s historical experience are asserted to be part of this intersocietal heritage. Sweden’s contributions to the developments resulting in (World) Conquest, (sustained economic) Growth and (extensive political) Voice are discussed, and the Medieval roots of the social configurations that make possible military expansionism, growing peasant affluence, and institutionalized political negotiations are explored. The almost permanent power struggles between oligarchic and monarchic regimes that characterize medieval Sweden are viewed as a crucial factor behind the survival of communal self-rule and the resultant compromise is interpreted as a form of parallel, competitive statebuilding, predicated upon the institutional separation of the land and the peasantry into two ‘separate economic bases’: a public and a private (noble) sector. The so called Engelbrekt rebellion is seen as a crucial watershed in these developments, and the role of the regional judges – the lawspeakers (lagmän) are emphasized. In the second study, the Swedish peasantry is discussed: its subdivision according to nature of land tenure and manner of political representation, and its economic stratification; also trends in peasant wealth and in the degree of inequality. Evidence from property taxations is used in order to resolve these questions for sample parishes and the results of earlier research are scrutinized and criticized. Different kinds of economic dynamics are discussed and a change from ‘feudal’ to modern economic dynamics is inferred. The ‘shortcut’ explanation where the free Swedish peasantry is interpreted as a survival from the Viking Age is also rejected. Peasant self-representation and affluence were in the main independent of tenure, and the strong position of peasant proprietors in 19th century Sweden is a late development connected to the rise of market production and to the extraneous interest in freehold property rights, leading tax peasants to political standpoints and alliances that eventually would fracture the peasantry. The role of lagmän (‘lawspeakers’) in medieval Swedish society is explored in the final chapter, arguing their central role in state-building and in the formation of oligarchic factions opposing absolutist tendencies. The ‘lawspeaker myth’ of independent regional spokesmen risen from the local peasantries is shown to have no foundation in known facts – on the contrary all of the earlylawspeaker whose families we know anything about were closely related to the royal and ducal dynasties.
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    Järnets tid. Den svenska landsbygdsbefolkningens järninnehav och järnkonsumtion 1750-1870
    (2003) Hallén, Per; Department of Economic History
    Abstract The preeindustrial possession and consumption of iron in rural Sweden 1750- 1870. (Publications of the Department of Economic History, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg university no 89) ISSN 403-2864. ISBN 91-85196-57-6 . Göteborg 2003 Author: Per Hallén Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Economic History, Göteborg university. (Written in Swedish with a Summary in English). Distribution: the Department of Economic History, Göteborg university, Box 720, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. The main purpose of this thesis was to investigate how much iron the rural population in Sweden possessed 1750-1870. The aim was also investigate and to calculate the amount of iron needed to replenish iron stocks lost to each year due to attrition. Many studies of inventories have been conducted in Western Europe and North America however; these studies have primarily focused on luxuries items such as gold, silver and furniture. Iron objects were different, as households did not consider their consumption as a luxury. Households used objects made of iron as coocking pots and other kitchen utensils. On farms the use of iron also increased. During the period 1750-1870, iron steadily replaced wooden parts in almost all farm implements, from spades to ploughs and harrows. The transition from wood to iron parts played an important roll as humans gradually took control over the landscape. The new iron tools made digging ditches easier and facilitated large-scale drainage of marches. Iron parts on ploughs and harrows broke the soil faster and deeper than older ones made entirely of wood. Iron tools were not luxuries but they played an important roll in farm economics during the period studied. In the mid 18th century, an average farm possessed about 150 kilos of iron, in 1870 that had increased to around 500 kilos. During that, time the composition of the different groups of iron shifted. Iron used in transport and agricultural production became increasingly important. It was in the transport sector that the rise in the possession of iron was first noted as farmers began to use iron tipped wheels and iron axels on wagons and carts. This improvement meant that wagons and carts could load more goods. The second wave of new and improved iron objects included agricultural tools – ploughs and harrows. Some important changes were made already in the late 18th century, however, the breakthrough of iron implements in agriculture came 1800- 20. It is interesting to note that this change was contemporary with a major shift to iron ploughs and harrows in British, Danish and Norwegian farming
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    Kartellen som sprängdes. Svensk bryggeriindustri under institutionell och strukturell omvandling 1945–1975
    (2006) Sandberg, Peter; Department of Economic History
    Kartellen som sprängdes. The Swedish brewing industry during institutional and structural change 1945 – 1975. (Publications of the Department of Economic history, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, no 98) ISSN 1403 - 2864 ISBN 91 - 85196 - 64 - 9 Göteborg 2006 Author: Peter Sandberg Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University. (Written in Swedish with a summary in English). Distribution: The department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Box 720, SE-40530 Göteborg, Sweden. In the aftermath of the Second World War there was a turn in the official view concerning problems related to competition. In order to create a stronger trade and industry, the needs to rationalise the structure of business organisation became a central aim. To reach this goal, the monopolistic cartels had to be abolished. The Swedish brewing industry was deeply affected by this process. Until the mid 1950´s, nearly all of the breweries were organised in a cartel that settled fixed prices and distribution areas. In the new legislative environment which developed, the cartel could not survive and it ceased to exist in 1955. The major reason the relatively small breweries scattered around the country had survived during the interwar years was that they were organised in the brewing cartel. Furthermore, the strict policy concerning alcohol and concessions to start new breweries supported a limited competition. In the early 1950´s, most of the small breweries had difficulties surviving in a competitive market. Instead, it was the major combines in the three biggest cities that strengthened their position. It is important to notice that the new institutional framework both meant a concentration of breweries, but at the same time a few breweries which never had been a part of the cartel emerged in the market. In the early 1960´s the two biggest combines merged. The new company – Pripps – had a total market share of sixty percent and became the single most important brewery in Sweden. At the same time competition increased. The major reason was the access for new actors in the wake of the institutional change and the introduction of a new type of medium-strong beer. The changing structure of the retail trade sector and the more efficient distribution opportunities were also important factors. Together with new distribution network and an unexploited innovation, the tin can, new entrepreneurs could enter the market and were able to challenge Pripps. After the merger, Pripps started to plan future rationalisations in production and distribution. Even though the company lost market shares in the latter part of the sixties the volume of production increased. But in the end of the decade, it became obvious that Pripps had difficulties to expanding in the Swedish and foreign markets. The solution was diversification and to reorganise the company in an investment trust. In 1973, Pripps started negotiations about a sale of the brewing division. In the end, the Swedish government became the owner of sixty percent in Pripps brewing division.
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    Konsten att skapa pengar. Aktiebolagens genombrott och finansiell modernisering kring sekelskiftet 1900
    (2006) Broberg, Oskar; Department of Economic History
    The joint-stock companies with limited liability have been argued to encourage large-scale risky investments through the structure of residual claims and, at the same time, to minimize the conflict between utility maximization by owners and maximization of the market value of the firm. This entails the importance of studying the incorporation process, in order to fully understand the dynamics of industrialization processes. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the role of joint-stock companies in the Swedish economic development during a period of structural change. Particularly the importance of the incorporation process for the modernization of the Swedish financial market is investigated. The study stretches from the passing of the first joint-stock company law in 1848 to the aftermaths of the 1932 financial crash. In the thesis two approaches are used. Firstly, the development of the legislative framework and the founding of joint-stock companies are analysed from an aggregated level. The main source for this is the archive of the Bureau of Patents- and Registration. Secondly, the role of the incorporation process is studied in individual companies through the analysis of literature and company archives. The constructed time-series of incorporation supports the conclusion that the general breakthrough of joint-stock companies in Sweden could be dated to the first two decades of the 20th century. During this period the use of joint-stock companies rapidly spread to smaller businesses and to all sectors of the economy, especially to enterprises in trade and financial services. The process of incorporation was intertwined with the modernization of the Swedish financial market, as it gave rise to a form of more transferable and impersonal ownership. The study of individual enterprises shows that incorporation was used as a vehicle for economic change, as in the analysis of the venture capital company ‘Finansinstitutet Svenska Värden’; here the endogenous approach to money deepens the understanding of how company financed innovation by engaging in a Schumpeterian process of ‘credit creation’. Furthermore the case study of Finansinstitutet is used to discuss Minsky’s instability hypothesis.
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    Möten med marknaden. Tre svenska fackförbunds agerande under perioden 1945-1976
    (2002) Gråbacke, Carina; Department of Economic History
    This is a study of how trade unions act when they are confronted with the consequences of innovations in their own sector of the economy. The framework in which this is studied, basically consists of Mancur Olson's distinction between encompassing/broad and narrow interest organizations, here represented by the peak organization of the blue-collar workers (LO) and the separate trade unions within LO, respectively. Furthermore, the framework also highlights that adjustment processes do not take place at the national level. It is never national economies that faces an innovation the adjustment takes place at the sector level, and at the firm level. As economic change never has been executed by rhetoric alone, it is at the sectoral level that change has to be addressed in a practical, rather than a theoretical, fashion. Three separate studies of trade union action and economic change have been carried out, focusing on the innovations introduced after World War II that had profound impact on the sectors concerned: the Textile Workers Union and the transformation of the textile industry from an almost self-sufficient status to a high level of import penetration; the Building Workers Union and the institutional innovations in the building industry that led to an increasingly politicized market; and the Retail Workers Union and the self-service concept together with the developments associated with it in the retail sector. Pivotal to the individual trade union was its ability to define the concept of rationalization/modernization in its own fashion. This made the concept rather fluid, and thus subject to the possibility of reinterpretations, if developments turned out to be different than envisioned. `Radicalization' was the result. In the course of less than a decade, all three unions were radicalized in their language and actions, as structural change was judged uncontrollable. This coincides with the general radicalization, which in this study is synonymous with a larger influence of the narrow interests, of the Swedish trade union movement. The study thus points at some possible explanations for this. Keywords: trade unions, the textile industry, the building industry, the retail sector, encompassing and narrow interests, the politics of productivity, innovation, economic change, structural adjustment, rationalization, competition, regulation, deregulation, bargained economy, free trade, protectionism, labor market policy, public housing corporations, union controlled firms, radicalization, organization costs, opening hour regulation
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    Omvälvningarnas tid: Handelshuset Ekman i Göteborg på en europeisk kreditmarknad 1790–1820
    (2011-01-26) Andersson, Magnus
    The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to chart and analyze the flow of payments and credits to and from Gothenburg for the period 1790−1820, with a special interest in the transactions involving The Merchant House Ekman & Co. Both bills of exchange transactions within Ekman & Co and protested bills of exchange for other firms are studied. Markus A. Denzel’s model of Cashless Payment is an instrument to study how bills of exchange were used to ease payments and credit relations in the European Early Modern Credit market between 1790 and 1820. European trade possibilities for the period 1790−1820 are discussed in chapter III. The period under scrutiny was rather dramatic with economic and political changes. In Great Britain there was the industrial revolution and France experienced the great political revolution, followed by the Napoleonic wars. Chapter IV explores the credit- and bill of exchange markets. Since protested bills of exchange and different ways to deal with the problems that occur are important, this dissertation examines protested bills of exchange for two periods 1798−1800 and 1811−1812. The reasons for protesting bills of exchange are either lack of acceptance or lack of payment, both of which are common in this analysis. As a consequence there were no more endorsement possibilities. Chapter V describes the business of The Merchant House Ekman for the period 1790−1800, with special interest in the bills of exchange transactions. Peter III Ekman started his business ca 1760. He realized the importance of European contacts and from early on he traded with Merchants in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Greifswald, Wolgast and Stralsund. During the period 1790−1800 he was one of the most important producers of salted herring in Gothenburg. As a return good he imported grain from Merchant houses in the Baltic Sea. He imported the important salt by using his own ships. Ekman’s credit transactions in the form of bills of exchange contracts are of central importance, but the difficulty with the bills of exchange transactions is that there are no obvious connections with the commodity transactions. Because of endorsement, it is impossible to tell exactly what bill of exchange belonged to a certain amount of traded commodity. Chapter VI examines the Ekman & Co shift from mostly trading in herring and iron to concentrate on colonial trade at the time of war. Concerning credit relations, a database has been created for bills of exchange dating from 1810, which is then used to analyze the credit relations that Ekman & Co had with other firms in the European market. The dissertation shows the benefits of discounting and how the endorsements were used, as well as the fact that the Cashless Payments system with the bills of exchange transactions worked. When the system failed there was an effective law that solved the problem. All of this is further evidence that Gothenburg was an integrated part of the European financial system.
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    Samhävd och rågång. Om egendomsrelationer, ägoskiften och marknadsintegration i en värmländsk skogsbygd 1630-1750.
    (2002) Granér, Staffan; Department of Economic History
    THY NEIGHBOURS PROPERTY. Property Relations, Enclosures and Market Integration in a Forest District of Central Sweden 1630-1750. (Publications of the Department of Economic History, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University no 86) ISSN 1403-2864. ISBN 91-85196-54-1. Göteborg 2002. Author: Staffan Granér Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Economic History, Göteborg University. (Written in Swedish with a Summary in English) Distribution: The Department of Economic History, Göteborg University, Box 720, SE–405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. The development towards more exclusive and private agrarian property rights has been considered one of the most important and crucial aspects of the modernisation process. Several theoretical models have been suggested to explain and analyse this development. Among them, two not necessarily incompatible, approaches can be identified. The neo-institutional property rights approach focuses on economising behaviour among individual agents in relation to factors such as enforcement and transaction costs, relative prices, market integration and contracts. The more sociological or class based property relations approach focuses on factors such as power structure, distribution, exploitation and social networks. The aim of this thesis is to carry out a local empirical study of this development in a critical dialogue with these theoretical models. The investigated area is Fryksdals härad (hundred) in Värmland County, a forest and ironproducing district in central Sweden. Local court rolls constitute the main sources of the thesis The region experienced a considerable economic transformation during the investigated period. The regulation and privatisation of access to commonly controlled woodlands and pastures as well as the reallocation of scattered strips on infields plays an important role. Immigration, population growth, colonisation and rapid establishing of iron mills in the 1690´s, contributed to a commercialisation of economic relations in general, and an increased scarcity of commonly managed resources such as wood, charcoal and waterpower. This development puts strains on the traditional local arrangements of rights over land and natural resources. A significant part of the legal cases reflects disputes and agreements concerning rights to village commons and infield strips. In the beginning of the period these cases are dominated by inter-village relationships concerning demarcations and common rights. During the investigated time, intra-village relationships concerning both commons and scattered strips become more frequent. The long-run result of this process could be described as a kind of enclosure where communal and socially embedded rights were gradually redefined.
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    Svenska arbetsgivareföreningen och arbetskraftsinvandringen 1945-1972
    (2012-05-09) Waara, Joacim
    Labour migration to Sweden is analysed from an employer perspective. The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to determine how the Swedish Employer Confederation (SAF) and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) were affected by labour scarcity; and second, to explore how SAF and LO tried to influence supply and demand on the labour market by controlling the stream of labour immigrants between 1945 and 1972. This thesis also questions whether the so-called Swedish Model was based on consensus between employers and trade unions, as it is usually claimed. As regards theory, the thesis focuses on collective action and how employer organisations and trade unions try to avoid competition among buyers and sellers by using cartel strategies. Although previous research has identified the trade unions’ rhetoric and actions regarding labour migration, hardly any attention has been given to the employers. This thesis comprises thus the first systematic study of how SAF tried to increase the labour supply by immigration. The employers’ ability to increase the labour supply was limited by the close relations and cooperation between the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party government, as well as the trade unions influence over the National Labour Market Board. SAF lacked an equally powerful ally. Because of labour scarcity LO agreed to increase the labour supply in the 1940s, as long as the native workers’ position was not threatened. SAF on the other hand meant that LO restricted the inflow of foreign labour and thereby maintained the excess demand for labour. In the mid 1950s Sweden implemented a more liberal migration policy which to a large extent pleased SAF, even though LO could still regulate non-Nordic immigration. In the 1960s the trade unions started to criticise the liberal migration policy and used their relations with the government to implement strict regulations. As a result LO could control all non-Nordic immigration. SAF protested against the new regulations but the government did not heed to the employers will.
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