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An Economic Philosophy of Production, Work and Consumption presents a new transhistorical framework of defining production, work and consumption. It shows that they all share the common feature of intentional physical transformation of something external to the agent, at some point in time. The book opens with a discussion of various theoretical traditions within economics, spanning mainstream and heterodox perspectives, and problems with production definitions in use today. Next, the author outlines various definitions in a more formal manner and provides a discussion on measurement and the production boundary. Unproductive work is redefined as socially reproductive, i.e. such that would not be performed on a Robinson Crusoe Island. Finally, the volume applies the new conceptual framework to various historical cases and discusses the future of production, work and consumption. This essential volume will be of interest to scholars of economic philosophy and methodology, the history of economic thought, economic history and national accounting.

This chapter presents new, nominal and real price indices for real estate in Stockholm from 1726 up to 1875. The new series presented here can be linked to already existing price indices for real estate in Stockholm: from 1875 up to 1957; from 1957 to1975 3 and; from 1975 up to 2020. For this, a new database is used that covers registered real estate transactions in the present inner city of Stockholm for the period and the method of repeated sales is applied. The indices are based on information from 22,169 unique transactions. To control for qualitative changes inthe housing stock, a database of 7,915 issued building permits has been used.

An Economic Philosophy of Production, Work and Consumption presents a new transhistorical framework of defining production, work and consumption. It shows that they all share the common feature of intentional physical transformation of something external to the agent, at some point in time. The book opens with a discussion of various theoretical traditions within economics, spanning mainstream and heterodox perspectives, and problems with production definitions in use today. Next, the author outlines various definitions in a more formal manner and provides a discussion on measurement and the production boundary. Unproductive work is redefined as socially reproductive, i.e. such that would not be performed on a Robinson Crusoe Island. Finally, the volume applies the new conceptual framework to various historical cases and discusses the future of production, work and consumption. This essential volume will be of interest to scholars of economic philosophy and methodology, the history of economic thought, economic history and national accounting.

This chapter presents an overview of the development of Stockholm’s real estate prices from 1420 to 2021. It summarises the results from the three studies in thepresent volume, which present new price indices for the periods 1420 to 1630, 1630to 1730, and 1730 to 1875. Furthermore, it links together all these indices with already existing ones that cover the periods 1875 to 1957, 1957 to 1975, and 1975 to 2021, respectively. In addition, we have also gathered a few sporadic sources onsales back to 1283, only a few decades after the founding of Stockholm, which can give a very rough idea of the price level before and after the Black Death. Together, they form some of the longest existing real estate price indices in the world. With this study, we can assess for the first time the trajectory of house prices in Stockholm over almost the full history of the city. This will not only give us insights into Stockholm ́s economic history but will also be an important source for researchers seeking to include historical real estate prices as a variable in any futurestudies.

Earlier research describes the development of real housing prices as a ‘hockey stick’, i.e. of long stagnation followed by a sharp upturn in recent decades. A problem is that there are very few indices of residential property covering longer periods. Using a database of around 10,900 sales, this study presents a historical housing price index for Stockholm 1818–1875, which extend a previous index by 57 years, one of the longest for any city. A so-called repeated sales index is compared to a sales price appraisals ratio index. We show that in real terms there have been two long upswings, in 1855–1887 and 1993–2018. In other periods, real prices were stagnant or even slightly declining. The nineteenth century upturn did not end in a crash, but was followed by stagnation for a century. There are many similarities between the two upturns. For example, both coincided with the demographic expansion and were preceded by deregulations. During both periods, properties became more expensive relative income levels.

This paper presents a newly constructed database on foreign trade of Sweden–Finland 1738–1805, consisting of all exports and imports that were recorded by the custom houses in this period, and is made available at www.historia.se/Swedish foreign trade 1738_1805.xlsx. The traditional view as presented by Eli Heckscher, who was very critical of the mercantilist policies of the time, was that the overseas trade of Sweden-Finland saw a trend of secular stagnation during the course of the eighteenth century. By contrast, we show that in conjunction with a substantial expansion of the population, total trade nearly increased twofold during the period of study. Despite that, there was a small decrease in the value of exports in relation to GDP, mostly explained by a drop in the relative price of bar iron. The degree of specialisation of Swedish exports saw a declining tendency in this period. While exports from Sweden had a higher degree of specialisation than Finnish exports, imported goods to Finland were more concentrated than Swedish imports. Lastly, the composition of imports did not markedly alter, meaning that a consumer revolution did not take place in either Sweden or Finland.

Written in celebration of its 350th anniversary in 2018, this book details the history of the central bank of Sweden, Sveriges Riksbank, as presented by Klas Fregert. It relates the bank's history to the development of other major central banks around the world. Chapters are written by some of the more prominent scholars in the field of monetary economics and economic history. These chapters include an analysis of the Bank of England written by Charles Goodhart; the evolution of banking in America, written by Barry Eichengreen; a first account of the People's Bank of China, written by Franklin Allen, Xian Gu, and Jun Qian; as well as a chapter about the brief but important history of the European Central Bank, written by Otmar Issing.

We present an estimation of quarterly GDP for Sweden stretchingback to 1913, using higher frequency series on manufacturing andprivate consumption as indicators and standard methods for tem-poral disaggregation from annual GDP data. Deseasonalization isperformed using JDemetra+ software. We use the Bry-Boschan al-gorithm to identify peaks and troughs, based on which we presentvarious chronologies of the business cycle in Sweden, indicating apartially new picture of the country’s economic growth over the last100 years., Business cycles, bubbles and debt in Swedish history

It was only after the foundation of a nation state in 1871 that the basis was laid for a German central bank and a national currency. The era of the Mark came to an end in the hyperinflation of 1923. The succeeding Reichsmark had an even shorter life when it was replaced by the D-Mark after the 1948 currency reform. The Allies created a new central bank system for the, at the time, not yet constitutionally established Federal Republic of Germany. In 1957, the Bundesbank was established as the successor of the Bank deutscher Länder. In 1999, the D-Mark was replaced by the euro. Since then the Bundesbank has remained a central bank (within the European System of Central Banks), but without its own national currency. All these changes reflect the struggle of German central banks to deliver price stability. This chapter has shown that without the consent and cooperation of the government, even a notionally independent central bank cannot maintain stable prices. Central bank independence, important as it is, does not guarantee price stability if the political circumstances are not right. This became clear in 1922. Likewise, under a totalitarian regime, the concept of central bank independence becomes meaningless. Furthermore, the exchange rate regime and international cooperation may restrict the room for manoeuvre for the central bank to maintain price stability, as this chapter has shown. Interestingly, the independence of the German central bank, which was twice imposed by foreign governments, received broad (popular and political) support in Germany during the Second World War, no doubt due to the experience in one generation of two episodes which led to the total destruction of the German currency. But it is important to note that the Bundesbank did not operate in a political vacuum. As Goodman writes: ‘Its independence is not written in stone; its enabling law can be changed. To maintain that independence, the Bundesbank has been forced to take the views of West Ge