An Economic History of Modern Sweden

The book is based on a rich and detailed quantitative material from research over the past decades with consecutive time series over production volumes, employment, productivity, investments etc. for sectors and branches covering the whole economy, even including estimates of non-marketed domestic work. It is also based on a broad literature from Swedish historiography with details on the individual level of firms, innovators and entrepreneurs. Focus is upon the interplay between technological, economic and social change where a number of broad themes are treated with a general interest to historians or economists, e.g. the role of social change and domestic markets versus international specialisation and exports as dynamic factors in Swedish economic growth.

1. Growth and transformation in two centuries 2. Agrarian Transformation and Early Industrialisation, 1790-1850 3. Railway Construction and Expanded Industrialisation, 1850-1890 4. The Breakthrough of the Industrial Society in 1890-1930 5. The Peak of Industrial Society, 1930-1975 6. The Third Industrial Revolution and the Breakthrough of the Service Economy, 1975-2005. Epilogue – Perspectives from the Third Industrial Revolution

Lennart Schön is Professor of Economic History at Lund University, Sweden.