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This paper documents regional population changes in Sweden since 1860 and investigates how these changes link to regional economic development (regional GDP). We combine long-term decade population data for the historical counties (1860–2020) with detailed annual population observations for municipalities (1968–2021). As industrialization picked up speed, this benefited regions all around the country in terms of production, at the same time as regional population patterns started to diverge. After a slowdown in the regional GDP convergence processes during the low-growth period of the 1980s, ‘double divergence,’ in both population and regional GDP per capita, has characterized Swedish growth patterns since the 1990s., QC 20230911

Studying migrants from Sweden to the United States, we provide new evidence on return migration during the Age of Mass Migration. Focusing on a sample of migrants and stayers observed in childhood, we document limited effects on income and occupational upgrading, but large effects on wealth. Male returnees held about twice as much wealth as stayers and about 40 percent more than staying brothers. These effects were likely driven by accumulated savings overseas, rather than inheritance or an income premium back home. For female returnees, wealth effects are of similar magnitude, but appear to be realized primarily through marriage.

Will technical change spur conflicts in the labor market? In this study, we examine electricity adoption in Sweden during the first decades of the twentieth century. Exploiting that proximity to hydropowered plants shaped the electricity network independently of previous local conditions, we estimate the impact of electricity on labor strikes. Our results indicate that electricity adoption preceded an increase in conflicts, but strikes were of an offensive nature and most common in sectors with increasing labor demand. This suggests that electrification provided workers with a stronger bargaining position from which they could voice their claims.

This paper tests if a strong labor movement leads to fewer industrial conflicts. The focus is on Sweden between the first general election in 1919 and the famous Saltsjöbaden Agreement in 1938, a formative period when the country transitioned from fierce labor conflicts to a state of industrial peace. Using panel data techniques to analyze more than 2,000 strikes in 103 Swedish towns, we find that a shift of municipal political majority towards the Social Democrats led to a significant decline in local strike activity, but only in towns where union presence was strong. The strike-reducing mechanism is related to corporatist explanations rather than increased social spending in municipal budgets.

There is a wide-spread concern that technical change may spur social conflicts, especially if workers are replaced with machines. To empirically analyze whether job destruction drives protests, we study a historical example of a revolutionary new technology: the adoption of electricity. Focusing on the gradual roll-out of the Swedish electricity grid between 1900 and 1920 enables us to analyze 2,487 Swedish parishes in a difference-in-differences framework. Proximity to large-scale water-powered electricity plants is used to instrument for electricity adoption. Our results confirm that the labor saving nature of electricity was followed by an increase of local conflicts in the form of strikes. But displaced workers were not likely to initiate conflicts. Instead, strikes were most common in sectors with employment growth. Similarly, we find that the strikes were of an offensive rather than a defensive nature. Thus, electrification did not result in rebellions driven by technological anxiety. It rather provided workers with a stronger bargaining position from which they could voice their claims through strikes.

We examine the long-term effects of a series of Swedish towns founded by the Crown during the early modern period. Their advantage over rural parishes consisted in having monopoly rights to trade with the local hinterland. Since the optimum sites were occupied by medieval towns, the Crown could only aim for second-rate locations. Using difference-in-difference combined with Propensity Score Matching, we find that a reduction in the distance to town increased gross production and population up to 30-40 km away. However, there is no evidence of increasing per capita production or yields. These natural constraints could only support a sluggish growth in the towns themselves. However, after the Industrial Revolution, the towns began to thrive. We argue that town status signalled the commitment of the Crown to nurture these locations creating positive expectations despite their natural constraints. During industrialization, agglomeration economies led them to become significantly large urban areas persistent until today.

This paper revisits the Power Resource Theory (PRT) by testing one of its more influential claims: the relation between the strength of the labor movement and the reduction of industrial conflicts. Using panel data techniques to analyze more than 2,000 strikes in 103 Swedish towns we test whether a shift in the balance of power towards Social Democratic rule was associated with fewer strikes. The focus is on the formative years between the first general election in 1919 and 1938, when Sweden went from a country of fierce labor conflicts to a state of industrial peace. We find that Social Democratic power reduced strikes, but only in towns where union presence was strong. We do not see any tangible concessions in terms of increased social spending by local governments after a left-wing victory as predicted by PRT. Instead the mechanism leading to fewer strikes appears to be related to corporatist explanations.

This paper provides regional GDP estimates for the 24 Swedish regions (NUTS-3) for the benchmark year 1571 and for 11 ten-year benchmarks for the period 1750–1850. The 1571 estimates are based on tax sources and agricultural statistics. The 1750–1850 estimates are produced following the widely used methodology by Geary and Stark (2002): labour force figures from population censuses at regional level are used to allocate to regions the national estimates of agriculture, industry andservices while wages are used to correct for productivity differentials. By connecting our series to the existing ones by Enflo, Henning, and Schon ( € 2014) for the period 1860–2010, we are able to produce the longest set of regional GDP series to date for any single country.

The causes and extent of regional inequality in the process of economic growth are at the core of historical economic research. So far, much attention has been devoted to studying the role of industrialization in driving regional divergence. But empirical studies on relatively unequal countries such as Italy or Spain show that inequality was already high when their modern industrialization began (Felice, 2011; Rosés et al., 2010). This paper studies the extent and drivers of pre-industrial inequality for the first time with reference to a pre-industrial European economy. Using new estimates of regional GDP for the regions of Sweden for the period 1571-1850 (Enflo and Missiaia, 2017), we find that regional inequality increased dramatically between 1571 and 1750 and stayed high until the mid-19th century. This result discards the view that industrial take-off was the main driver of regional divergence. Decomposing the Theil index for GDP per worker, we find that the bulk of inequality from 1750 onwards was driven by structural differences across sectors rather than different regional productivity within sectors. We then show that counties with higher agricultural productivity followed a classic Malthusian pattern in its population dynamics when experiencing technological advancement, while ones with higher industrial productivity did not. The difference in the two sectors is what boosted pre-industrial regional inequality. We suggest that institutional factors such as the creation of the Swedish Empire, the monopoly trading rights for Stockholm and the protective industrial policy explain this exceptional pattern.

This paper provides regional GDP estimates for the 24 Swedish regions (NUTS-3) for the benchmark year 1571 and for 11 ten-year benchmarks for the period 1750-1850. The 1571 estimates are based on tax sources and agricultural statistics. The 1750-1850 estimates are produced following the widely used methodology by Geary and Stark (2002): labour force figures from population censuses at regional level are used to allocate to regions the national estimates of agriculture, industry and services while wages are used to correct for productivity differentials. By connecting our series to the existing ones by Enflo et al. (2014) for the period 1860-2010, we are able to produce the longest set of regional GDP series to date for any single country.