Lund Studies in Economic History – serie

Inom internationell forskning har på senare år intresset ökat för frågan om vad de teknologiska och organisatoriska förändringarna under den andra industriella revolutionen innebar för kraven på arbetskraftens kvalifikationer och kompetens. Av de industrier som kom att spela en viktig roll för den starka ekonomiska utvecklingen i Sverige från 1890-talet och framåt befann sig verkstadsindustrin i frontlinjen. I denna studie, som baseras på ett unikt källmaterial med detaljerade uppgifter på individ- och företagsnivå, studeras sambandet mellan teknologisk förändring, yrkesskicklighet och lön i ett antal verkstadsföretag. I avhandlingen visas att den snabba utvecklingen av verkstadsindustrin i hög grad underlättades av en välutbildad arbetskraft och av att ett betydande humankapital hade ackumulerats i branschen i slutet av 1800-talet. Erfarenhet var den viktigaste lönebestämmande faktorn, men även formell utbildning hade börjat få betydelse för verkstadsarbetarnas löneutveckling. I avhandlingen visas också att den relativa efterfrågan på yrkesskicklig arbetskraft följde de stora cykliska förändringarna i den ekonomiska utvecklingen under 1800-talets senare decennier.

State policy intervention in the economy has been a ubiquitous phenomenon in history. Varying in form and intensity, it has had a profound impact on trade, welfare, international relations, and political and economic thinking. This thesis provides an inclusive analysis of policy action in the European car industry. It details its development, processes, nature, and content and presents the story against a backdrop of changing economic realities and progressing European market integration.

What role the state should and can play in bringing about economic development is one of the longest standing debates in the economic sciences. Yet, previous research has mostly focused on how a variety of industrial policies affect static efficiency. Few studies have tried to analyze how industrial policy and government intervention affects dynamic efficiency, i.e. an economys ability to generate lasting economic growth. The present study argues that interventionist industrial policy can only have a positive effect on dynamic efficiency if it manages to resolve market failures. This means that the question of whether a given set of government interventions and industrial policies have speeded up or slowed down development can be answered through a market failure approach. That is, by studying whether the policies could have resolved any market failures that negatively affect dynamic efficiency. The study also theoretically identifies a number of such generic market failures. The study then uses a market failure approach to analyze Malaysias industrial policies vis-à-vis the domestic palm oil industry. A previous study has claimed that the policies vis-à-vis this industry represent perhaps the foremost example of successful industrial policy in Malaysia. The present study challenges this view. It argues that, while there are isolated examples of industrial policies vis-à-vis the palm oil industry that might have increased both static and dynamic efficiency by resolving market failures, it is at the moment not possible to conclude that the net effect of the policies have been positive, or that dynamic efficiency would have been significantly lower had the government opted for a laissez-faire industrial policy.

Det finns en uppsjö av valmöjligheter på den thai-ländska landsbygden idag; i synnerhet i ett område som San Sai i norra Thailand, som ligger all-deles i närheten av en stad. Bönder kan välja att driva på förändrings-processen, genom att utnyttja de tillfällen som ges av en förändrad marknad, eller först försiktigt studera resultatet för dem som testar nyheterna. De kan också lämna landsbygden och söka för-sörjning i staden. Vad talar för att stanna kvar inom jordbruket? Av-ståndet till mark-naden minskar, och då inte bara för att vägarna har blivit bättre utan för att informationsflödet har ökat. I takt med att ekono-min växer ökar efter-frågan på nya produkter, vilket skapar möjligheter för den som vill satsa på jordbruket. Men det har också blivit besvärligare att vara bonde i Thailand idag. Modernt jordbruk kräver dyra insats-varor, levnads-om-kost-naderna ökar, och arbetskraft har blivit en bristvara. Avhandlingen bygger på en studie av kontraktsodling av potatis i norra Thailand, i ett område där många bönder har kunnat göra lönsamma val. Det saknas skarpa gränser mellan olika roller San Sai, och det har medverkat till att de traditionella hierarkierna har brutits upp. Jäm-bör-diga och affärsmässiga rela-tioner till företagen, till andra bönder, och till de stat-liga jord-bruks-råd-givarna har betydelse för böndernas ekono-miska beslut. Jämlikhet och rörlighet skapar en grogrund för samarbeten, vilket i sin tur ökar förut-sätt-ningarna för att en positiv omvandling, snarare än utarmning ska ske.

Daniel Waldenström Lifting All Boats? The Evolution of Income and Wealth Inequality over the Path of Development Does a rising tide lift all boats? This question that is, to what extent does improvements of the general economy benefit all is central to the study of economics and history. From fundamental issues about whether market forces have an innate tendency to increase or decrease differences in economic outcomes, to much debated questions about the effects of government policies, distributional concerns are always present. In this dissertation, a novel dataset of international long-term income and wealth inequality data is presented and used to shed new light on long-standing issues in economic history. What were the distributional impacts of the industrial revolution? Who gains and who loses the most from the outbreak of a financial crisis? Has progressive taxation been a successful way to redistribute resources from the rich to the rest of the population? Several important findings come out of the analyses presented. A general result is that whereas nineteenth century industrialization had a mixed impact on inequality across the Western world the twentieth century experience, including a rapid growth of government, educational reforms and the introduction of progressive taxation, uniformly equalized societies.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine how differences in socioeconomic status, race and place of residence interact with infant and child mortality in Colombia over the period 1967-2010. One of the reasons why the study focuses on infant and child mortality is that the living conditions of children are outside their control, and therefore a good measure of inequality of opportunity. This study explores two large micro-datasets, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International (IPUMS-I) and finds that mortality is socially and racially stratified in Colombia. Health care alone cannot reduce the relative differences in mortality In addition, relative differences are also dependent on the context at themunicipality level, and the geographical differencess in mortality have widened over the period. Thus, improvements in survival have been made, absolute inequalities have narrowed, but relative inequalities have not improved, remained high and even widened according to some measures. The conclusion may be unexpected for the public opinion given that the decline in absolute inequalities are taken as a sign of overall improvement, but the focus on relative inequalities reveals that patterns of inequality in Colombia are persistently high. If attention is not directed towards these patterns, they might worsen. The benefits of growth are less concentrated than before, but the pattern of exclusion is evident, and is related to historically conditioned socioeconomic inequalities between groups, areas and ethnicities.

The conventional approach to the analysis of structural change is to apply a horizontal perspective on the economy. This means that sectors are studied in isolation. By the integration of two strands of literature on structural change and the role of technology, evolutionary economics and input-output economics, this thesis applies a vertical perspective on the economy – how production processes create, and alter, the intermediate interdependencies between horizontally represented sectors. With this approach, several wellestablished notions about the contemporary Swedish economy are analysed from a new angle. These concern the level of specialization, the process of deindustrialization, the growing importance of business services, the productivity leadership of the manufacturing sector, and reduced competitiveness. It is argued that a vertical perspective contributes to a new and more complete understanding of value creation and structural change during the Third industrial revolution.

This doctoral thesis examines the driving forces of product innovations in the Swedish manufacturing industry during the period 1970-2007. Specifically it examines whether and to what extent innovations have been the creative response to positive factors, such as new opportunities and obstacles related to their exploitation, and negative factors, such as economic, environmental and organizational problems. To this end, a newly constructed database, SWINNO, containing more than 4000 innovations is explored. Using this database, the thesis studies the determinants of innovation activity in firms, industries, in development blocks and on the macro-level. The results point to the existence of two main patterns. Innovations aimed to solve economic, environmental and organizational problems have culminated during the 1970s, reflecting the deep economic, social and environmental character of the structural crisis. Some of these innovations have been parts of development blocks solving obstacles to the introduction of emission control and renewable energy technologies. Innovations exploiting opportunities have culminated in the mid-1980s and towards the beginning of the 2000s. These have formed development blocks surrounding ICT and biotechnology, evolving by way of the exploitation of opportunities and the solution of technological imbalances. New technologies have been salient driving forces among entrant and incumbent ICT firms, but evidence was also found for a role played by decreases in profitability in inducing search for new products.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the evolution of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) based on solid empirical material for the Swedish economy. The focus on this thesis is exploring the role of acquisition by incumbent firms in the evolution of NTBFs. The findings of this thesis show that selection is a core feature in the evolution of NTBFs. NTBFs experience a high exit rate during the first years after entry, though they exhibit a higher survival probability than other types of entrepreneurial firms in general. Moreover, acquisition is an alternative but important selection mechanism for start-ups, particularly for NTBFs. Through acquisition, acquirers select “quality” start-ups in terms of technological capabilities and efficiency, especially when acquirers are from multinational enterprises (MNEs). In addition, acquired NTBFs experience an extensive internal selection and experimentation by acquirers within 4 years after acquisition. If acquired NTBFs survive the internal selection and experimentation process, the growth of acquired NTBFs is likely to be promoted, but this pertains only to acquisition by Swedish MNEs.

This study provides an explanation of the different pathways of agricultural change and economic development in north and south Vietnam. It shows that pre-colonial factor endowments conditioned the development of the rice economies of the two deltas in Tonkin and Cochinchina. The study relates to, and deviates from, the new literature on the colonial origins of contemporary development (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson; Engerman and Sokoloff), and proposes an alternative understanding of how historical processes of economic transformation are shaped. The analysis revives the factor endowment approach (Boserup, Myint), re-interprets an old and controversial debate (Moral Economy versus Rational Peasant), and presents a new understanding of extraction in colonial times (based on Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson). The study’s theoretical interpretation of scant empirical data suggests that factor endowments conditioned the surplus capacity and shaped the institutional arrangements, which affected the equality of opportunity for the majority of rice farmers.

This dissertation provides new insights on creativity and the lives of creative people, by availing of unique data-sets covering the lives, works and emotional states of famous music composers. The underlying research documents the long-run persistence of a society’s preference towards cultural goods and shows that the geography of composer births displays remarkable continuity over a period of seven centuries. It formalizes and documents the trade-off between agglomeration economies (beneficial peer effects) and diseconomies (peer crowding) experienced by music composers. Furthermore, it is explored how peer crowding impacts composers’ emotional well-being. The results point to a large reduction in composers’ longevity, if they are located in cities where the peer competition has been greater. Finally, the determinants of psychological well-being are studied and quantitative evidence is provided on the existence of a causal impact of negative emotions on outstanding creativity - an association hypothesized across several disciplines since Antiquity; however, not yet convincingly established.

This thesis analyses self-employment, sickness absence and early retirement pension among immigrants in Sweden. The empirical analysis investigate a period, 1981-2003, characterized by a transformation from high employment and expansion of the welfare state in the 1980s into a state with high unemployment and tightening social insurance systems during in the 1990s. This thesis shows that self-employment decision is influenced by local labour market conditions. Interestingly, the mechanism seems to be different in the process of entering and leaving self-employment. Our findings show that immigrants enter selfemployment when local labour demand is improving and leave their business for nonemployment in response to deteriorating local labour market conditions. The results in this thesis are consistent with the notion and indications from previous research that the use of the social insurance system in Sweden has not only been related to health, but also influenced by contextual and non-medical factors at regional level, in terms of both local labour market conditions and institutional aspects (e.g. social norms). The results also show that exposure to worse health conditions during the first year of life is associated with the greater likelihood of experiencing sickness absence in adulthood.

This dissertation examines various aspects of mobility during the closing decades of the nineteenth century in Sweden. In terms of the pace and magnitude of the changes taking place during this industrial breakthrough, no other period in Swedish history compares. By studying three aspects of mobility: firm entry and exit, migration and social mobility, this dissertation provides new insights on the choices and outcomes of men, women and firms during a formative period in which the geographic, social and economic landscapes of Sweden were fundamentally transformed. In order to study processes determined at the micro level, novel data sets is employed which tracks individuals and firms across space and over time.

This dissertation uses longitudinal micro-data from Stockholm between 1878 and 1926 to study the causes and consequences of the fertility transition and to examine the development of living standards inequality during industrialization. Although both processes have received much interest from researchers, we know relatively little of how either one played out among individuals in urban areas, which were both at the forefront of industrialization and the fertility decline. To address this deficiency, I have analyzed the development of socioeconomic differentials in fertility, children’s intergenerational social mobility, and infant and child mortality during Stockholm’s industrialization and fertility transition. The results of this work challenge many existing explanations of the fertility decline and reveal how, despite overall improvements in living standards, elite socioeconomic groups were able to continually leverage their superior resources to maintain significantly lower levels of infant and child mortality.

All that’s mine I carry with me Early life disease and adult health in Sweden during 250 years The aim of this doctoral thesis is to study early life exposures in relation to adult health in Sweden during 250 years. The early life exposures investigated are the foetal origins (nutrition) and the inflammation hypotheses. Longitudinal individual and household data are combined with local area data on food costs (rye prices) and disease load (infant mortality rate, IMR) using a Cox regression framework to analyse the 55-80 year mortality in four parishes in Scania, southern Sweden, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Register based cohort data on individuals in late 20th century Sweden born in eleven countries in 1921-1939 are analysed in Cox regressions of adult mortality, including IMR and GDP per capita in the year and country of birth. A survey (2008) in Scania is used to analyse self-reported early life socioeconomic data and IMR in the birth year in relation to adult self-rated health (SRH). Results from the historical studies suggest that cohorts exposed to high IMR have high mortality in ages 55-80 specifically from airborne infectious diseases and that a high disease load of airborne infectious diseases in infancy has a strong impact on later life mortality, while hypotheses concerning food costs (nutrition) and disease load during pregnancy are not supported. Essentially no adult socioeconomic mortality differences are observed. In the two modern time studies individual adult and early life socioeconomic conditions are associated with adult mortality and SRH, respectively, while IMR and GDP per capita are mostly not.

Sweden’s elderly population is growing, propelled by a continuous decline in old-age mortality, while coupled with a persistent replacement level fertility. This changing age structure increases the per worker cost of providing a given age-vector of per capita benefits, encompassing costs for pensions, health care, and all other type of old-age welfare services, which presents a looming challenge for the welfare state to sustain its social transfer system. Options for tackling this daunting challenge, such as increasing fertility and immigration levels, cutting benefits and growing public debts, present numerous obstacles, thus discussion of policy options has shifted the focus towards extending working life. This book contributes to this ongoing policy discussion by exploring the recent trends in labor supply, and investigating the underlying mechanisms driving these trends. The results of this work illustrate a recent trend of prolonging working life in Sweden, whereby average labor income has increased at older ages, and younger cohorts have increasingly postponed their retirement. While these changes are uniform across individuals of different sexes, occupations, and educational levels, the underlying mechanisms appear different. These micro mechanisms may have myriad implications concerning aggregate economic support for the ageing Swedish population. In this regard, the findings in this book are relevant inputs for assessing the welfare consequences of population ageing and deriving evidence-based policy options.

This dissertation examines the changing time allocation of men and women at the turn of the 21st century in Sweden, an interesting case given its strong position concerning female labor force participation, maternal employment, and gender equality. The aim is to examine to what extent gender and parenthood affect various types of time allocation, both in the labor market and household, and provide new insights into changes occuring over time between 1990 and 2010. Throughout the 20th century, women became increasing engaged in the labor market, yet parenthood has continued to impact how women spend their time to a much greater extent than men. The persistent, gendered impact of parenthood has begun to change however, which has implications not yet fully understood or documented. Results place Swedish developments in an international perspective, while contributing to our understaning of the changing behaviour of men and women in the labor market and household.

Sweden experienced a remarkable economic transformation between the 18th century and the outbreak of World War I. This dissertation consists of four self-contained papers that uses a quantitative empirical approach to identify key drivers of this transformation by analyzing the contribution of the potato to economic growth, the determinants of the early investments in mass schooling, and how the rollout of the national railroad network shaped rural and urban growth patterns from the mid-19th century to the present day. Together, the findings of this dissertation contribute novel evidence on the causal determinants of Sweden’s acceleration in growth and also shed light on the historical roots of contemporary patterns of regional and urban development.