Finanskriser i sverige 

Den 15 september 2008 tvingades Lehman Brothers ställa in sina betalningar, vilket startade den mest omfattande internationella finansiella krisen sedan depressionen på 1930-talet. Krisens orsaker, bankernas agerade och statens roll i det finansiella systemet har diskuterats livligt. Men finansiella kriser är inte unika för vår tid utan har varit en del av ekonomins utveckling under de senaste århundradena. 

Denna bok fokuserar främst på de finansiella kriser som drabbat Sverige under de senaste 150 åren, det vill säga sedan landet började industrialiseras och den ekonomiska tillväxten ta fart. Finansiella kriser har ofta inträffat i samband med perioder med snabb tillväxt och ändrade förutsättningar för näringsliv och finansmarknad. I framställningen analyseras krisernas bakgrundsfaktorer, utveckling hur kriserna har lösts och framför allt vilken roll staten har spelat i denna process. Interaktionen mellan stat, marknad och aktörer har varit viktiga för framväxten men även för att lösa finansiella kriser. Boken ger en överblick över svenska finanskrisers drivkrafter, utveckling, räddningsaktioner och konsekvenser. 

The purpose of the reinsurance industry is to provide insurance for primary insurers. Primary insurers have fairly standardised policies, whereas those of reinsurers are often less so, more internationally oriented and likely to cover very large risks. There is little doubt that primary insurance policies, as well as an insurance market based on fixed premiums, would be difficult to sustain over the long run without reinsurance. Reinsurance enables portfolio diversification by the primary insurer in order to avoid the kinds of devastating losses that could threaten its survival (Kopf 1929; Golding 1930; Doherty & Smetters 2005; James et al. 2014; Borsheid & Haueter 2012).

This paper discusses the emergency of the Swedish life reinsurance market from the mid 19^th century and describe the development until the 2010s. In the wake of the founding of the first joint stock corporations in the middle of the 1850s, insurers set rather limited risk maximums and signed reciprocal treaties with mainly foreign insurers to limit their risks. During the following six decades the life reinsurance was handled by individual corporations but in 1914 a commonly owned life reinsurance company was organised to deal with the issue for reinsurance for the entire market. This continued until the end of the 1980s when most of the individual insurers preferred to set up their own corporations for dealing with the issue of life reinsurance and Sweden Re was transformed into a completely different organisation. 

For more than a century, mutual insurers have dominated the Swedish insurance market. Independent of the historical roots and traditions, companies that sell life and other (non-life) forms of insurance have chosen the mutual organizational form. We focus on two different mutual insurers—Folksam and Länsförsäkringar—in decoding their historical roots, governance and management structure. Our focus is on the differences and similarities with special attention to customer’s participation in governance. The chapter shows that it is indeed possible to organize successful hybrid organizations with longevity and that the state’s role in the process is vital but not always a precondition for successful development of hybrid firms. In addition, the chapter also shows that it is difficult to include customers/owners in the governance of these firms and that there exist many different options for creating such systems.

This study demonstrates that the presence of diversified corporate forms within the insurance industry does not always lead to the dominance of what is, according to theory, the most efficient business form, the joint-stock corporation. Swedish mutual insurance companies have often been connected to various popular movements, and have thus obtained quasi-monopoly rights for writing certain kinds of insurance. This has been important as a means of obtaining economies of scale and creating efficient organisations, and has allowed them to compete with their joint-stock rivals. Mutuals have also remained important players in the insurance market by keeping policyholders’ interests in focus through creative product diversification and by expanding nationally to reach customers outside of their original base. Mutuality also protected them against hostile take-overs that weakened the stock corporations. Mutual insurers not only survived as independent companies but also were a success. 

It has been suggested that regionalism is defined “as an economic process whereby economic flows grow more rapidly among a given group of states [in the same region] than between these states and those located elsewhere”. In this paper we approach the economic underpinnings for the Baltic Sea Region by analysing the developments with regard to trade and investment in the quarter of a century that has passed since the fall of the communist regimes that divided the European continent At the same time we look into the political developments that brought the 2009 adoption of the European Union’s first macroregional strategy, the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. The strategy was a symbolic second milestone with regard to the political endeavours to reintegrate the continent; the first being the 2004 enlargement. Having transformed the Baltic Sea from a ‘Mare Dividum’ to a European ‘Mare Nostrum’ was indeed also a sign of the success of such integrative political processes.

However, it may also be argued that the perceived need for a specific strategy in order to further and deepen the integration and reduce the economic gaps within the European Union gives an indication that there was more to be wished for with regard to this region. Further, more recent political developments in Europe as such as well as the constituent countries of this macroregion has cast some doubts on the future. In this paper we ask ourselves whether developments with regard to investments and trade are in congruence with the notion of the building of one integrated region; does it make economic sense to talk about a Baltic Sea Region or is the eastwest divide still present? For example, to what extent have the developments with regard to foreign direct investments proved sustainable? What sectors are leading the way and which are lagging? What divisions remain to be tackled? These are some of the questions that this paper attempts to address based upon a thorough analysis of the existing sources with regard to foreign direct investment and trade flows. In addition, in a concluding section, we open up an analysis on whether recent political development risk nullifying the progress made on the economic arena – or whether Brexit and connected developments are actually reinforcing the European macroregional agenda?

The fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected, period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge not spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History has not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of fi nance and business in several countries in Central Europe and the Baltic states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these ‘transition’ countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, fi nancial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period.

In this paper we take the current global financial crisis as a point of departure for a comparative and longitudinal study of such crises in Sweden during the last 100 years. A focus of our attention is how the state (or entities close to the state) chooses to manage the financial crises and thus how they distribute the direct and indirect costs connected to these crises, i.e. how the state in attempting to resolve crises effectively also helps pick the winners and losers of these recurring phenomena. However, this is only a pilot study of a new research project and here we will focus on how Scandinavian countries have dealt with financial crises, and particular how the state have acted in connections with financial crises.

The fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected, period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge not spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History has not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of fi nance and business in several countries in Central Europe and the Baltic states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these ‘transition’ countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, fi nancial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period.

The fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected, period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge not spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History has not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of fi nance and business in several countries in Central Europe and the Baltic states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these ‘transition’ countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, fi nancial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period.

The fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected, period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge not spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History has not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of fi nance and business in several countries in Central Europe and the Baltic states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these ‘transition’ countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, fi nancial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period.

Some twenty years after the fall of the communist dictatorships that divided the European continent the European Union in late 2009 adopted its first ever macroregional strategy – the European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. The strategy was a symbolic second milestone with regard to the political endeavours to reintegrate the continent; the first being the 2004 enlargement. Having transformed the Baltic Sea from a Mare Dividum to a European Mare Nostrum is indeed also a sign of the success of such integrative political processes. However, at the same time the perceived need for a specific strategy in order to further and deepen the integration and reduce the economic gaps within the European Union gives an indication that there is more to be wished for with regard to this region.

It has been suggested that regionalism is defined “as an economic process whereby economic flows grow more rapidly among a given group of states [in the same region] than between these states and those located elsewhere”. In this paper we thus approach the economic underpinnings for the Baltic Sea Region by analysing the developments with regard to investment and trade flows during the last twenty years.

We ask ourselves whether these developments are in congruence with the notion of the building of one integrated region and whether it makes economic sense to talk about a Baltic Sea Region? For example, to what extent have the developments with regard to foreign direct investments proved sustainable? What sectors are leading the way and which are lagging? What divisions remain to be tackled? These are some of the questions that this paper attempts to address based upon a thorough analysis of the existing sources with regard to trade and investment flows.

The fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected, period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge not spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History has not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of fi nance and business in several countries in Central Europe and the Baltic states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these ‘transition’ countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, fi nancial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period.