Working Papers / Department of Economy and Society

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/32152

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The Quest for Bureaucratic Efficiency - Sweden’s Rise and Fall as an Empire
(2024-04) Eloranta, Jari; Häggqvist, Henric; Karonen, Petri; Land, Jeremy
The prevailing literature on global state capacity suggests that: 1) Europe was pulling ahead of other regions in the early modern period, and 2) state capacity in this period was mostly dedicated to the purposes of centralizing state power and increasing military power. The interplay of institutions needed to expand military power and fiscal expansion was a fundamental factor in these processes. We examine an unlikely candidate for an empire and expanding state, namely early modern Sweden, where the construction of bureaucratic structures and the development of the military went in parallel during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sweden had scarce financial and human resources, so its expansion was based on an offensive strategy to capture territory and resources, i.e. that "the war had to pay for itself." The military burden of the expansion was, in comparative European terms, manageable, and it went hand-in-hand with the development of an efficient state bureaucracy. The strategy worked well until the early 18th century, when confronted by more powerful enemies and inept domestic leadership. From the 1720s onwards, military expenditures began a slow decline. The Swedish state was often forced to rely on revenue from trade to finance wars. However, a centralized state remained as a long-term structural element for Sweden, even though it had to eventually open up to trade, commit to political neutrality, and implement a democratic system.
Skill Premium in Sweden, 1900–1950
(2024-04) Heikkuri, Suvi
This paper documents the evolution of wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers in Sweden throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Using newly digitized data on income taxes, this paper demonstrates that the skill premium decreased throughout 1900–1950, and most rapidly from 1930 onward. This is similar to the fall in skill premium documented by Goldin and Katz for the United States. However, unlike in the United States, the fall in skill premia in Sweden cannot be attributed to a supply shock of high school graduates. Rather, this paper shows that incomes of the low- and unskilled increased faster than those for more-skilled. Despite of similar technological change and rapid economic development, Sweden did not exhibit a comparable rise in high school education as the United States. The paper suggests other mechanisms for the falling skill premium in Sweden, such as informal schooling, emigration, and trade union activity.
Did industrialization improve the skill composition of the population? Evidence from Sweden, 1870 to 1930
(2024-03) Heikkuri, Suvi
This paper documents the changing skill composition during industrialization in Sweden using population censuses and HISCO/HISCLASS scheme. The results reveal a general shift from unskilled to more-skilled occupations, though the trend differs by gender and sector. First, the skill upgrading was more pronounced for women, who left agriculture for better job opportunities elsewhere. Second, within manufacturing, there was a shift from medium-skilled to low- and unskilled occupations, consistent with the workshop-to-factory shift. However, this trend is mirrored by skill upgrading within services, where the expansion of trade and transport introduced new more-skilled jobs. Finally, I show that skill distribution in Sweden exhibited similar trends to the United States, though with greater deskilling and slower increase in white-collar employment.
Slavery, Resistance and Repression: A Quantitative Empirical Investigation
(2024-03) Rönnbäck, Klas; Theodoridis, Dimitrios; Galli, Stefania
In this article, we study what individual and social characteristics made it more likely for an individual to resist slavery. We employ a unique census from the Caribbean island of St. Croix in 1846, which allows us to study not only the characteristics of those that did resist slavery, but also of the whole enslaved population on the island. We analyze this data by using descriptive statistics as well as econometric analysis. Our findings show that relative deprivation played no role: individuals were as likely to resist slavery regardless of the relative status of the position they held. Resistance might have been more likely on small establishments, possibly the consequence of a greater level of trust among smaller groups of enslaved individuals. Gender also played a role in the types of resistance undertaken, and thereby possibly also in the risk of being detected and punished.
Thriving in a declining economy - Elite persistence in the West Indies, 1760-1914
(2024-03) Galli, Stefania; Theodoridis, Dimitrios; Rönnbäck, Klas
The issue of how elites as a social group come to be, how they maintain their position and how they affect the society they come to control is very much at the centre of the inequality debate. The present paper studies one of the most extreme unequal societies ever recorded, that of the sugar-based economies in the West Indies, and examines the emergence and persistence of its economic elite by focusing on the island of St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. The study spans 154 years, enabling us to study long-run elite persistence along with the effects that major economic, institutional, and social changes had on it. Our study shows that elite persistence remained high throughout this period, despite several potential ‘critical junctures’ taking place. The Crucian elite not only managed to maintain its relative standing but also to accumulate a growing share of the total wealth available on the island. Maintaining a grip on the economy did, nonetheless, coincide with a severe and rapid impoverishment in absolute terms.
Numeracy and the legacy of slavery Age-heaping in the Danish West Indies before and after emancipation from slavery, 1780s-1880s
(2024-02) Rönnbäck, Klas; Galli, Stefania; Theodoridis, Dimitrios
In many slave societies, enslaved persons were barred from acquiring much education. What skills the enslaved persons nonetheless were able to acquire, and how this changed following emancipation, is not well known. We study quantitatively how a legacy of slavery impacted upon the development of basic numeracy skills. Our results show that numeracy skills started to improve in the population under study well before emancipation from slavery. We also show that the formal public and private schooling seems to have played a marginal role in this process. We therefore conclude that much of this learning was acquired in informal ways.
The persistence of wealth Economic inequality in a Caribbean slave colony in the very long run
(2024-02) Rönnbäck, Klas; Galli, Stefania; Theodoridis, Dimitrios; Faust Larsen, Kathrine
It has been proposed that slave societies were the most unequal societies in recorded human history. What little evidence there is shows an ambiguous picture. We contribute with a study on the wealth distribution in a Caribbean society, based on individual-level data for the full population, combining tax and census records into the largest comparable historical dataset from the Global South. Our results show a distribution of wealth shockingly close to perfect inequality. Our results also show a remarkable degree of persistence: even after slavery was abolished, the freedmen never managed to accumulate physical wealth to any measurable degree.
Occupational structure in a black settler colony: Sierra Leone in 1831
(2024-01) Galli, Stefania
Occupational structure is a valuable proxy for economic development when more direct indicators are lacking. This study employs occupational structure for the Colony of Sierra Leone in 1831 with the aim of contributing to shed new light on African economic development at a very early stage. This work is based on data extracted from the 1831 census, one of the first reliable censuses in African history. This source provides valuable information on the whole colonial population, including occupational titles for a vast part of it. The results show that the Colony was far from homogeneous, combining a largely primary oriented countryside with a more modern urban sector centre around the Freetown’s harbour.
The failed promise of freedom: Emancipation and wealth inequality in the Caribbean
(2024-01) Theodoridis, Dimitrios; Rönnbäck, Klas; Galli, Stefania
Was there any redistribution of resources in the Caribbean societies after emancipation from slavery? What were ex-slaves’ prospects to improve their socioeconomic status after emancipation? To shed some light on these questions this paper provides unique empirical evidence on patterns of wealth inequality before and after emancipation for the island of St. Croix, a typical slave-based sugar island in the Caribbean. Our findings suggest that there was no decrease in inequality following the institutional break of emancipation. A key explanation, we argue, rest on factor endowments and more specifically on the restrictive land-labor ratios that prevailed on several Caribbean islands, such as St. Croix. Due to these factor endowments, former slaves remained unable to accumulate any substantial amounts of wealth for decades after emancipation.
Reconstructing a slave society: Building the DWI panel, 1760-1914
(2023-07) Galli, Stefania; Rönnbäck, Klas; Theodoridis, Dimitrios
In this article, we discuss the sources employed and the methodological choices that entailed assembling a novel, individual-level, large panel dataset containing an incredible wealth of data for a full population in the Caribbeans over the long run, the DWI panel. The panel contains over 1.35 million observations spanning 154 years, well over 100 variables, and its records are linked across sources along demographic and geographic lines throughout the entire period. This richness is all the more valuable in light of the limited source’s availability characteristics of the area and is hoped to lead to a renewed debate over our understanding of former slave societies, while fostering collaborations with scholars relying on similar datasets for other areas of the world.
Urbaniseringen av det regionala musiklivet
(2023-01) Albinsson, Staffan
This report seeks to explore the geographical spread of music in Sweden during the last pre-pandemic year 2019. Statistics from the 1980s are also presented. It was found that in many regions there has been a reluctance to adhere to the policy goal of providing cultural experiences for ‘all’. Rather, in some regions there has been a clear urbanisation process that leaves residents in many smaller towns and municipalities without ample opportunities for musical experiences in their vicinity. Other regions, however, manage to meet concert demand even in their rural municipalities. This leads to large differences among the residents of Sweden in terms of their opportunities for concert experiences depending on which region they live in. Of course, it is not possible to have a completely even supply. But are the huge differences among the regions and their respective choice of business model and their results really acceptable?
From Global to Local: Trade Shocks and Regional Growth in Italy During the First Globalization
(DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 2022-11) Gomellini, Matteo; Missiaia, Anna; Pellegrino, Dario
Globalization can create winners and losers at the spatial level within national economies. 1bis paper examines the economic impact of international trade on local economies in the case of late nineteenth-century Italy. We combine data on foreign trade at the national level with census data on manufacturing employment, and with our new estimates of agricultural employment by crop at the provincial level. Crossing this information, we compute two measures of trade exposure at the local level, namely import penetration and export ratio. We then perform a pand analysis to test whether changes in trade exposure explained provincial GDP growth. First, we detect that import penetration af agricultural products was associated with lower growth af Southern provinces. Second, we :find that Northern provinces were more able to benefit from positive export dynamics in the manufacturing sector. The latter finding might stem from a higher degree of mechanization among Northern manufacturing firms. These results suggest that trade exposure could have been a factor contributing to widening the (already existent and growing) North-South gap.
Unions, insurance and changing welfare states: The emergence of obligatory complementary income insurance in Sweden
(2022-01) Hamark, Jesper; Lapidus, John
Why do unions that support comprehensive public unemployment insurance introduce the private alternative known as obligatory complementary income insurance (OCII)? In this article, we seek answers to how Swedish unions have thought and argued on OCII, how these thoughts and arguments change over time and whether there are differences across unions within the same confederation and across different confederations. The material includes congressional minutes and other internal documents as well as newspapers and union magazines, 2000–2020. We find a myriad of arguments for and against OCII. Many unions highlight the eroded public unemployment insurance as the prime trigger of OCII. Yet, for unions with high rates of unemployment, the OCII premium may be too expensive to handle. Further, some unions argue that high-wage members are subsidised by low-wage members: OCII only benefit those who earn above the ceiling in the public unemployment insurance. We also find that OCII enhances sharp competition between unions in order to keep and recruit new members. Higher ceiling in public unemployment insurance makes OCII useless for many union members, and thus less valuable as a tool for recruitment. To avoid member flight, therefore, there is an incentive for unions to downplay the need to restore public unemployment insurance compatible with a universal welfare model.
Wage distribution within the Swedish State Railways, 1877–1951: Material and methods.
(2021-06) Hamark, Jesper; Turner, Russell
For nine decades, the Swedish State Railways (SJ) produced wage records containing all its permanent employees. SJ employed more people than any private employer in Sweden, and the records contain individual-level information across hundreds of occupations: full name, yearly wage, occupational status, year and date of birth, occupational status, time of employment at SJ, etc. This paper serves as a background to a project on wage distribution within SJ, with the aim of tracking the development of, on the one hand, occupational or class-based wage inequality and, on the other, gender-based wage inequality. In this paper, we present the source material in detail, discuss its strengths and weaknesses, and describe the methods used to develop and process the wage records into data. Special attention is given to the adoption and application of HISCLASS, the historical, international social class scheme.
Jordnaturernas fördelning i Sveriges län år 1700. En rekonstruktion, samt en jämförelse med förhållandena vid 1500-talets mitt
(2020-08) Gadd, Carl-Johan
From the mid-16th to the early 20th century, Swedish farms were divided in three cadastral categories: tax, crown and exempt land. In 1700, each category made up for about a third of the farms, but precise information on regional variations is lacking. In this paper, an estimate is made of the distribution of land according to cadastral categories in the Swedish counties in 1700. The approach is to sum, for each county, the land that was converted from crown land into tax land between 1701 and 1824. Combined with data on the situation in 1825, this allows for a reconstruction of the distribution of land according to cadastral category in the 22 counties in 1700. In 1700, tax land dominated in northern and north-central Sweden. Crown land was the largest category in Götaland and was particularly large in Sweden’s southeastern and southernmost counties. The exempt land was most extensive in the three counties surrounding Stockholm and three formerly Danish counties in the very south. It is well known that the proportion of tax land had decreased sharply, in the country as a whole, between 1560 and 1700. However, the comparability of the figures for the two points of time has been questioned, since Sweden’s area expanded in the 17th century. The present study shows that the 17th-century redistributions of land between the social classes were the main cause of the decline in tax land, while the expansion of the Swedish territory had less effect on the ownership structure as a whole. The decline of tax land had been especially sharp in the three counties that surround Stockholm.
Labour market conflicts in Scandinavia, c. 1900–1938: The scientific need to separate strikes and lockouts
(2020-02) Hamark, Jesper
Research on labour markets conflicts has come a long way. Today we know that conflicts vary over business cycles and with the design of labour market institutions; they tend to cluster around wars and return in longer waves; certain branches are affected by conflicts more than others, and conflicts in the last couple of decades have been feminised and tertiarised. Yet we could do better. With few exceptions quantitative studies are about conflicts, that is, strikes and lockouts in amalgamation. Analytically separating strikes and lockouts has the potential of shedding new light on several debates of historical and theoretical importance. While the distinction between the two types of conflicts has general implications, in this paper I make specific references to the three Scandinavian countries, namely Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Employers and employees struggle over influence and division of income. Occasionally the two parties use, or threaten to use, their respective tools: the lockout and the strike. The day the scientific community decides to treat employers and employees as a single entity, we should also do the same with lockouts and strikes. But not before.
Too LATE for Natural Experiments: A Critique of Local Average Treatment Effects Using the Example of Angrist and Evans (1998)
(2019-11) Öberg, Stefan
There has been a fundamental flaw in the conceptual design of many natural experiments used in the economics literature, particularly among studies aiming to estimate a local average treatment effect (LATE). When we use an instrumental variable (IV) to estimate a LATE, the IV only has an indirect effect on the treatment of interest. Such IVs do not work as intended and will produce severely biased and/or uninterpretable results. This comment demonstrates that the LATE does not work as previously thought and explains why using the natural experiment proposed by Angrist and Evans (1998) as the example.
Industrial wages in mid-1880s Sweden: estimations beyond Bagge’s Wages in Sweden. Data, source and methods
(2019-09) Hamark, Jesper; Collin, Kristoffer
Most researchers interested in Swedish wages during early industrialization have used the seminal work Wages in Sweden from the 1930s as their point of departure. Whereas the material in Wages in Sweden solidly tracks the movements of wages, it is not suitable for comparisons across industries or counties at a specific point in time. Nor should Wages in Sweden be used to estimate wages in absolute levels. Based on hitherto-unused source material from a large, nationwide public inquiry, we estimate industrial wages in the mid-1880s. The population consists of industrial workers with different experience, skills and firm attachment. Our estimations include a national wage as well as inter-industry and inter-regional wages in both absolute and relative terms, weighted by employment. The findings call for a substantial revision of relative wages across industries. They also indicate that the wage dispersion across industries and counties was lower than previously thought. We estimate the national wage for women as being half the size of that of men.
Instrumental variables based on twin births are by definition not valid
(2018-04) Öberg, Stefan
Instrumental variables based on twin births are a well-known and widespread method to find exogenous variation in the number of children when studying the effect on siblings or parents. This paper argues that there are serious problems with all versions of these instruments. Many of these problems have arisen because insufficient care has been given to defining the estimated causal effect. This paper discusses this definition and then applies the potential outcomes framework to reveal that instrumental variables based on twin birth violate the exclusion restriction, the independence assumption and one part of the stable unit treatment value assumption. These violations as well as the characteristics of the populations studied have contributed to hiding any true effect of the number of children. It is time to stop using these instrumental variables and to return to these important questions using other methods.
An introduction to using twin births as instrumental variables for sibship size
(2017-04) Öberg, Stefan
Some families who experience a twin birth get one more child than they had intended and planned for. This is the reason why twin births are used to create instrumental variables (IVs) for the number of children in a family. In this chapter I introduce IV techniques in general and the use of twin births for IVs in particular. IVs based on parity-specific twin births can indeed, under certain circumstances, be valid and reliable. In this chapter I discuss what these circumstances are. I rely heavily on the work by Joshua Angrist and coauthors. In contrast to them I argue that it is important to recognize that IVs based on parity-specific twin births have “heterogenous treatment effects”, meaning that it is only for some families that the twin birth leads to an unintended and unplanned birth. Recognizing this highlights a few assumptions that are not always thoroughly acknowledged in previous research. We, for example, need to make assumptions about the possibility of unintended single births and the families experiencing these. It is also the case that including families that have not yet reached (or surpassed) their desired number of children when using IVs based on parity-specific twin births will lead to estimates that are biased towards zero. Most importantly we need to reduce the claims of estimating generalizable, causal effects when using twin birth instrumental variables.

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