This study was performed within the Interreg project «Biological cultural heritage as a sustainablevalue creator». The focus of the project has been to show the potential that small-scale producers havein highlighting natural and cultural values connected to their food production. The consumer surveypresented in this report was conducted at two different places in Sweden and two in Norway. InSweden, the survey took place in Gävleborg County, at the food festival Moläta in Järvsö and at thesummer farm Svedbovallen outside of Järvsö. In Norway, similar surveys were conducted inTrøndelag, at the summer farm Eggjenseteren in Snåsa and at the delicatessen Mathallen Smak ogBehag in Oppdal. The survey was conducted as a combination of questionnaire and follow-upinterview. We are also discussing the results from a pilot study performed at the Gregorian Market inSweden. The consumer survey focuses on four main themes: a) how the informant/customer viewsthis type of local artisan food companies and what they appreciate when visiting them, b) what thecustomer associates with such local food products, c) what natural values and biological culturalheritage they associate with such products, d) the background of the customer / informant.About half of the informants in this survey responded that they are familiar with the concept of«biological cultural heritage». But as the link between local food products and natural and culturalheritage is not clear to all customers, there is a potential in disseminating this knowledge further, thuscontributing to strengthen both the economy and the sustainability of the business. The results alsoshow that many of the customers value the experience of visiting such outlets. This can includeexperiences related to volunteer work, drinking coffee, experiencing special landscapes and havingclose contact with animals. The social aspects when visiting the food festival, the market, the summerfarm or the local outlet for niche products are something influencing the customers' experience of theproducts. Many of the informants / customers in this survey turned out to have an indirect / historicalgeographical connection to the point of sale. Consequently, the results show that it often is importantto contact emigrants, cottage owners and other local/regional tourists/tourism actors to form a goodcustomer base for both the products and experiences offered.Our results show that the sale of local food products ought to be considered as just a part of an overallexperience offered. The products, together with the experiences and activities should be seen as apackage that customers are willing to pay extra for. Small-scale artisan food producers shouldtherefore focus on the holistic concept of their business and not just the quality of the food products. 

Research on gender and entrepreneurship, is a broad field of research developed in the intersection between theories about entrepreneurship and gender and feminist theory. Within this research field labor, family and the state are the key elements. The gender perspective is one of society's most important organizing principles and entrepreneurship is seen as important for promoting growth, creating jobs, etc. The study of gender and entrepreneurship in combination is therefore important to understand the forces that shape our history, our present and our future.

This book is the result of a workshop organized by the Research Center Enter Forum, at Södertörn University in December 2015. The theme of the workshop was Policy, Entrepreneurship and Gender. Starting from a gender perspective, the papers presented analyzed how economic development and social processes has led to the emergence of new industries, and how technology and policy in cooperation may outcrowd women’s participation in certain industries. Additional topics are the impact of gender on firms ability to survive in the long term; How women entrepreneurs see women in business; How social entrepreneurship can be the catalyst for women's rights; And the the challenges and opportunities of female equine entrepreneurs in urban businesses encounter in their daily activities

Suburbs represent an essential subject for regional studies and have a rapidly increasing economic significance within wider metropolitan regions (Phelps 2010). It is necessary to create inclusive suburbs with a stronger identity. The current growth of populations in major cities requires an ability to reorganize existing cities and a massive restructuring of urban infrastructure (Modarres and Kirby 2010). The interpretation of the needs of suburbs have previously called for a transdisciplinary and collaborative strategy (Després et al. 2004). We look at entrepreneurship and different types of 21 businesses as a source of vitalization of suburbs. These ventures are studied in the context of the diversity of the population of suburb. Entrepreneurial investments, the establishment of high impact enterprises as well as networking among local and migrant businesses represent elements that can vitalize previously marginalized suburbs. Enterprises that are clustered in suburban neighborhoods reflect the different impacts of suburban and city spatial forms. Newly arrived citizens draw upon the critical mass of ethnic members to form a niche market for ethnic business (Fong et al. 2007). Minorities may have limited access to financial capital in the larger urban economy, but ethnic enclaves may provide a source of a unique competitive advantage (Cummings 1999). Entrepreneurship rooted in a suburban surrounding represent a specific opportunity to become embedded in an economic and spatial dimension. The migrant may be seen as representing a diversity capital which penetrate specific market conditions located in ethnically diverse neighborhoods situated in the suburbs of major cities. The spatial and entrepreneurial dimension of ethnic business can thereby be given a relevant context for interpretation.

This article analyses long-term business entry in the Swedish brewing industry, presenting new data on its organisational historiography. Since 1830, the rate of entry has varied considerably; entries increased progressively from the 1850s, and fell at a decreasing rate from the early twentieth century. An increasing tendency to enter the trade can be observed from the mid-1980s – in particular, there has been a considerable resurgence since the turn of the millennium. The article elaborates on explanations that are both exogenous and endogenous. Above all, the results provide support for the role of endogenous conditions. The results should be viewed as complementary to previous analyses of the (Swedish) brewing industry, which either have employed shorter analytical time-frames or have mainly focused on the role of exogenous conditions, such as changes in the institutional framework.

In 1771, the first Swedish academic thesis on bankruptcy and insolvency was defended by Carl Bergström at Uppsala University. In this and other contemporary Swedish publications on the topic, shortcomings in the debtor’s character including gambling, dishonesty, fraudulent behaviour and a disposition for speculation were mentioned as major causes for bankruptcies. The idea that a debtor also was a swindler, and should be severely punished, was spread by Italian merchants to, above all, France, Spain, England and Germany. The moralising causal explanation for bankruptcy can be questioned from a social science research perspective. Based on modern literature, we can see many reasons for why a trader, shopkeeper or an artisan had to file for bankruptcy. An economic shock is an event that occurs outside of an economy and produces significant change within an economy.

Uppsatsen redogör för förklaringar till företagsdödlighet i såväl offentliga utredningar som inom ekonomisk och sociologisk forskning och teoribildning. Två fundamentalt olika föreställningar om hur och varför företag beter sig på ett visst sätt har dominerat de flesta studier. Ett perspektiv förutsätter en central roll för företagsledningens beslutsfattande och kompetens. Ett andra och motsatt perspektiv ser företags beteenden bestämda av externa krafter över vilka företagsledningen saknar kontroll. De olika föreställningarna påverkar resultat och slutsatser inom forskningen och har också betydelse för utformningen av den ekonomiska politiken.

Ekonomer betraktar vanligtvis konkursutvecklingen som en konjunkturindikator och därmed beroende av förändringar på ekonomins efterfrågesida: konkurserna förväntas öka i tider av ekonomisk nedgång och minska under högkonjunkturer. Flertalet analyser är emellertid kortsiktiga. I denna uppsats presenterar vi ny och unik empiri där vi ana­lyserar det långsiktiga sambandet mellan konjunkturväxlingar och konkurser i Sverige mellan år 1830 och år 2010. I uppsatsen diskuteras också problem som kan uppstå i tolk­ningen av konkursstatistiken, både historiskt och i vår samtid. Den statistiska analysen visar att det delvis går att fastställa ett samband mellan makroekonomiska svängningar och förändringar i konkursmängden.

We analyse firm survival and focus on several levels of analysis (both firm level and macro-level). We employ a unique longitudinal data set, recorded at the firm-level and covering nine complete entry cohorts of Swedish companies. The companies were founded between 1899 and 1992, and each firm is followed over nearly a decade. We adopt the semi-parametric complementary log-log (cloglog) model. The main novelty of our approach is that, unlike extant studies so far, we are able to distinguish between the impact on the hazard rate of founding conditions and contemporaneous, post-entry conditions. Using our new approach we test several hypotheses derived from the Industrial Organization and Organizational Ecology literatures.

Objectives: The knowledge of the effects of white-collar crimes is incomplete. In the article, we operationalize white-collar crimes as bankruptcy frauds. Economic models maintain that interlinkages between firms may give ‘domino effects’: bankruptcy events could lead to ‘bankruptcy chains’ in which a bankruptcy spreads to other firms. Analogously, criminologists assert that social and economic networks can be a major source of fraud diffusion, with the potential to drive other firms bankrupt. Recent empirical results show that crimes may have detrimental and even asymmetric (nonlinear) effects on economic activity. We analyze the diffusion and the aggregate development of bankruptcy frauds in Sweden over nearly two hundred years, specifically focusing on the relationship between bankruptcy frauds and the bankruptcy volume. We also consider linkages between bankruptcy frauds, bankruptcies, and the macroeconomic cycle. Methods: We use long, aggregate time series, collected from several different historical and contemporary sources. Applying the recently developed cointegrating nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, we investigate whether the bankruptcy volume reacts asymmetrically to increases and decreases in bankruptcy frauds, both in the short and the long run. Results: Bankruptcy frauds reveal a causal effect on bankruptcies, showing an asymmetric (nonlinear) diffusion effect from economic frauds to the bankruptcy volume. Increases in bankruptcy frauds have a positive and significant effect on the bankruptcy volume. However, decreases in bankruptcy frauds show no significant effect. No causal relationship between the macroeconomic cycle and bankruptcy frauds is found. Conclusions: Our data and research approach demonstrate how previously generated hypotheses in both criminology and economic research on the relationship between (economic) crimes, economic activity, and the diffusion of white-collar crime can be tested at an aggregate level. © 2018 The Author(s)

The link between new venture survival and the presence of founding teams is investigated, in particular the effect of the gender composition of teams. Furthermore, we study venture survival, gender, and institutional change. A unique longitudinal database is employed, covering a large number of Swedish ventures established during 6 specific years, 1930-2005. These data capture the initial gender diversity of start-ups. The contextualization of entrepreneurship involves situational and temporal boundaries, and we elaborate on contextual factors at different levels of analysis. Our results show that ventures founded by teams have a higher probability of surviving, but show no overall team gender homogeneity/heterogeneity effect. However, we find some support for the fact that ventures founded by all-female teams have lower survival chances. Nevertheless, the clearest negative effect is found for female solo start-ups. Furthermore, our results support the fact that institutional transformation may gradually have increased the likelihood of ventures founded by females to survive. 

Recent developments in entrepreneurship suggest a causal link between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth: entrepreneurship precedes economic growth. A positive effect from entrepreneurship on economic development in advanced, innovation-driven economies in the most recent decades is often maintained. Self-employment is one of the most common indicators of entrepreneurship. The present study uses very long series of non-interrupted data on self-employment in Sweden (1850–2000). It analyzes the relationship between variations in self-employment and economic growth. For the entire period, variations in self-employment had a significant, instantaneous positive correlation with GDP growth. However, no causal relationship could be discovered: variations in self-employment did not (Granger) cause GDP growth. We discovered a structural break in GDP growth as early as in the year of 1948. Up until 1948, (Granger) causality between self-employment and GDP could not be established for any direction. For the other segment (1949–2000), GDP growth (Granger) caused self-employment growth, but not the other way around. For the period 1949–2000, but not for the previous period, selfemployment lagged with respect to GDP growth.  Consequently, GDP growth preceded self-employment growth, but self-employment growth did not precede GDP growth. Given that self-employment is a suitable indicator, the empirical results in this study are, in several respects, in disagreement with dominating assumptions in mainstream research.

This chapter studies the internationalization of the Swedish–Danish dairy corporation Arla. During a period of 100 years the dairy sector went from being at the focus of national and regional interest, the industry has become global. In some geographical markets, or in particular market areas, these transnationals – corporations as well as cooperatives – may compete fiercely, and their growth strategy is often to merge with or acquire local producers. However, these multinational firms also actively cooperate in other areas (e.g. in branding or distribution) or on other geographical markets. This may take the form of strategic alliances, such as joint ventures. Thus, coopetition – cooperation and competition – has been a common recent strategy. In the case at focus in this study, Arla Foods a.m.b.a. mergers are conducted with cooperatives in European countries, while businesses that are located further away are taken care of through exports and joint ventures. The main contribution of this article is that it employs internationalization theory and places the globalization of cooperatives in the middle of the academic discussion about internationalization. A recommendation for further studies is to both dig deeper into the changing nature of cooperatives historically, but also to look closer at the strategic deals that global expansion of cooperatives is based on. 

Social enterprise (SE) is often depicted as combining entrepreneurial and social dimensions, and as operating between the market and the state. This chapter discusses how the institutional framework shaped by the universalistic Scandinavian welfare state and the recent reforms of its mode of operation inspired by new public management (NPM) influence the opportunity structure for the development of SEs in Scandinavia. It demonstrates, in a highly institutionalised welfare provision system such as the Scandinavian welfare state, and in a context that is simultaneously characterised by the implementation of NPM reforms, SEs risk to be caught between the Charybdis of becoming integrated into the public welfare system and the Scylla of behaving like for-profit actors. In the 1990s, while Sweden and Finland experienced economic downturns which led to major welfare reforms, Norway’s financial situation stabilised.

The interest in social enterprises has increased rapidly during the last decades in Sweden as in many other countries. The use of the concept continues evolving and a commonly agreed definition has yet to emerge— ‘different versions’ provide points of reference for different groups in society as well as in policy initiatives. Even if the concept of social enterprise remains relatively new in the Swedish context, the phenomena referred to as such today have a long history and must be understood in relation to the development and strong position of public welfare structures as well as theircurrent transformation. During the pre-welfare state phase in history, social initiatives predominantly focused on those who experienced social disadvantages in a rather poor society. These types of charity initiatives during late 19th century combined with strong social movements such as the labour movement and democracy movement, highlighting equality and democracy which later characterised the Swedish welfare state. Since late 20th century, services provided by the public sector have increasingly been subject to competition, thus growing the market for private welfare services– including those sold by social enterprises. Policies, procurements and different client choice models have not been limited to certain types of private initiatives. Social enterprises do therefore compete on the same market as non-profit organisations (NPOs) and conventional enterprises.

The concept of social enterprise, as well as that of social entrepreneurship, were introduced in Sweden in the 1990s and have since then become increasingly common in practice, policy and academy. This chapter is based on many years of research on social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and civil society, as well as work on “mainstream” entrepreneurship, where business logic dominates the field. The chapter starts with a description of Swedish historical trajectory. During the 19th century, poor people’s protests were partly hearkened by an emerging middle class that was influenced by an international humanistic movement. The interest in non-profit social enterprises has also increased recently; this trend is particularly linked to the increased interest in private social-service providers in welfare-policy areas.

Entrepreneurship is celebrated as a miracle for all sorts of reasons and has increasingly been lauded for its capacity to ‘respond to needs’ or to ‘meet societal challenges’. The experiences from these transdisciplinary entrepreneurship and innovation initiatives reveal a continued need to develop working methods and mobilize resources for this work. The field of entrepreneurship consists of the academic literature as well as a broader discourse to which practitioners, media and policy makers also contribute arguments. Entrepreneurship research stems from the study of specific dynamic activities framed in economic theory. The spread of entrepreneurship into different spheres in society in recent decades is to a large extent characterized by the acclaimed characteristics of phenomena that have been nourished by decades of economic embeddedness. Epistemologically, the field of entrepreneurship can generally be characterized as rather pragmatic. In the field of entrepreneurship and innovation, there has been an obvious response to the call for sustainable development.

Det är viktigt att företagsekonomin inte sätter på sig skygglappar och har modet att ha en bred, systemisk syn på hållbarhet. Vi föreslår att företagsekonomin ger mera utrymme åt att söka och finna fungerande alternativ, inte genom att bara tänka ut nyheter hela tiden vilket inte är hållbart i längden, utan även genom att presentera organisationer som redan är i gång och kan inspirera till hållbart organiserande i större skala – en slags systemisk surdeg för hållbarhet. Vi illustrerar vår reflektion med berättelser från fältet. I en handlar det om sökandet efter en förståelse av det (alternativa) sociala företagandet och företagsamheten i det civila samhället. I den andra handlar det om små entreprenöriella organisationer som beskriver sig självasom fungerande utanför kapitalismen. I den tredje presenterar vi idéer kring hur organisering av konst/kultur i sin tur kan vara kopplade till hållbarhet.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Swedish credit market was still dominated by private financial networks and by a private supply of capital. Banks, discounts and other public financial institutions only played minor roles as financers of trade and industry. In spite of these circumstances private financial networks were embedded in public financial institutions and bankruptcy legislation. In this chapter, the authors describe the development of the bankruptcy system in Sweden between 1734 and 1849, placed in a European perspective. The Roman bankruptcy legislation ceased to function in conjunction with the disintegration of the Empire and its institutions. For a long time thereafter, a long-standing bankruptcy system was missing in Europe. The Germanic tribes brought their own right-system into the Roman territories of Gaul, Italy and Spain, where they often lived alongside the older, Romanized population and its laws.

According to Buchanan and Congleton (1998. Politics by Principle, Not Interest: Towards Nondiscriminatory Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), the generality principle in politics blocks special interests. Consequently, the generality principle should thereby promote economic efficiency. This study tests this hypothesis on wage formation and labor markets, by investigating whether generality defined as state neutrality could explain employment performance among OECD countries during 1970–2003. We identify three types of non-neutrality concerning unemployment. These include the level or degree of government interference in the wage bargaining process over and above legislation which facilitates mutually beneficial wage agreements, the constrained bargaining range (meaning the extent to which the state favors or blocks certain outcomes of the bargaining process), and the cost shifting (which relates to state interference shifting the direct or indirect burden of costs facing the parties on the labor market). Our overall hypothesis is that non-neutrality or non-generality increases unemployment rates. The empirical results from the general conditional model suggest that government intervention and a constrained bargaining range clearly increase unemployment, while a few of the cost shifting variables have unexpected effects. The findings thus give some, but definitely not unreserved, support for the generality principle as a method to promote economic efficiency. One implication may be that the principle should be amended by other requirements if the political process shall indeed be able to promote economic efficiency.

Företag är självklara inslag i det moderna ekonomiska livet. Människor har i århundraden startat och drivit företag, de har köpt varor och tjänster av företag och säkert i många omständigheter även sålt, varor eller tjänster till företag, eller den egna arbetskraften mot en löneersättning.  Företag spelar en mycket viktig roll i samhällsekonomin. Genom att producera varor och tjänster koordinerar företag användningen av resurser i form av råvaror, arbetskraft, teknologi och kapital. Utan företag skulle var och en av oss behöva lägga oändligt mycket tid på att få tag på sådant som vi behöver för att tillgodose våra grundläggande behov. Att behöva producera allt vi behöver skulle också vara tidsödande, dyrt och leda till stora välfärdsförluster både för samhället och för enskilda individer. En effekt av att företag organiserar produktionen av varor och tjänster är att de specialiserar sig på en eller ett fåtal varor och tjänster. Detta gör att de genom sina erfarenheter och interna kunskapsutveckling kan effektivisera produktionen så att vi kan nyttja de resurser som varje företag tar i anspråk på ett så effektivt sätt som möjligt. Företag är dock inte en enhetlig massa. Det finns små, medelstora och riktigt stora företag. Företag kan vara privat eller statligt ägda och några verkar väldigt lokalt, medan andra verkar i många olika länder samtidigt. På grund av sin speciella ställning i samhällsekonomin har företaget och företagandet haft en självklar roll som studieobjekt inom ekonomisk historia. Detta kapitel ger en översikt över de viktigaste forskningsfrågorna och teman inom ekonomisk historisk forskning.