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- Andersson-Skog, Lena, 1959-, et al.
(författare)
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Det sammanflätade intresset: Staten, affärsbankerna och småföretagen i ATP-systemet 1958-1962 : [The Intertwined Interest: the State, the Commercial Banks and Small Business Finance during the Supplementary Pension Reform, 1958–1962]
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scandia. - Lund : Scandia. - 0036-5483. ; 87:1, s. 38-60
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article focuses on the interaction between the state and Swedish banks during the establishment of two institutes for small business credit, AB Industrikredit and AB Företagskredit, between 1958 and 1962. These institutes were established as intermediaries between the supplementary pension system and the credit market. We have been able to elucidate this process by the Swedish Bankers’ Association granting us privileged access to archival material on these negotiations.It is demonstrated that the strong ideological conflict characterizing the parliamentary debate on the supplementary pensions system did not spill over into the system being implemented within the financial sector as this was organized through the examined credit institutes. Instead, the banks and the state were able to negotiate through established channels and arenas for business-government relations in the financial sector. Even if the parties initially exhibited mistrust based on different historical interpretations of the market for small business credit, they also recognized the degree of change that would be brought on by the supplementary pension system with regard to the financial markets and capital formation as a whole. Hence, they downplayed ideological differences and strived to reach an outcomethat was mutually beneficial in its final form. A crucial indication of this consensus is that fifty percent of each institute was owned by the state while the other fifty percent was owned by the banks.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Andersson-Skog, Lena, 1959-, et al.
(författare)
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Family Taxation as Tax Reduction : The Introduction of Income Splitting in Swedish Taxation, 1945–1952
- 2020
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper deals with the introduction of marital aggregation and income splitting in Sweden in 1952. It is demonstrated that actors such as political parties, employers and white-collar unions embraced income splitting because it mitigated the effects of wage moderation and progressive income tax for most wage-earners. In this respect, we recognise that the income splitting reform was made at the expense of married women with high incomes. This result relates to previous research which has noted that women´s organizations and politicians representing women´s interests have functioned as ‘policy takers’, rather than ‘policy-makers’, in the Scandinavian corporatist system.
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| 5. |
- Eriksson, Martin, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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Att trygga framtiden : Beslutsprocessen om LKAB:s vinstavsättning 1956–1961
- 2021
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Ingår i: Historisk Tidskrift. - : Svenska Historiska Föreningen. - 0345-469X .- 2002-4827. ; 141:4, s. 643-667
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When the Swedish state nationalised the mining company LKAB in 1957, it became the sole owner of one of the richest iron ore fields in the world. The government was aware that iron ore was a non-renewable resource and wished to conserve this wealth for future generations by allocating part of the revenue from LKAB to a mineral trust fund. This article investigates the decision-making process that created the LKAB trust fund. We demonstrate that, initially, the Social Democratic government had a dual goal with the LKAB trust fund. On the one hand, it wanted to use the revenue from LKAB to fund applied scientific and technical research to complement research and development within the private sector, thereby aiming to accelerate economic growth. On the other hand, the government were very concerned about the economic development of northern Sweden, where LKAB´s mines were located. It wished to reduce the dependence on natural resource exports and to diversify the regional economy by providing capital for investments in the manufacturing industry. However, the government eventually came to the decision that these disparate goals could only be realized by creating two separate funds. One fund, the so-called Ore fund (Malmfonden) was created to fund applied technical and scientific research. The other fund, the so-called Norrland fund (Norrlandsfonden), was created to provide investment capital for manufacturing industries in northern Sweden. The Social Democratic government had strong political ambitions to develop both these areas. To retain its commitment to national growth, it wanted the state to keep technological development in the economy at a sufficient level. The government also had a growing commitment towards spatial cohesion and began to implement active regional policies in northern Sweden. By stimulating investment in manufacturing industries, it hoped to break what was perceived as long-standing structural problems of regional unemployment and unbalanced outmigration.
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| 7. |
- Ewa, Axelsson Lantz, 1983-
(författare)
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Naturresurser, sågverksbolag och bönder : konflikter i Västernorrland 1863-1906
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the nineteenth century, competition over forestland and waterways grew in Northern Sweden. This increased the pressure on existing institutions of natural resource governance. It culminated with a ban on private acquisition of woodland from smallholders in 1906. This thesis deals with how the local communities handled the institutional challenges of this process. I study two geographical areas connected to different stages in the chain of production, from the inland of standing timber to the downstream sawmills. Previous research states that the sawmill industry in this region used its position in local governments to gain economic advantages. The number of votes were related to the value of one’s property and income, which put forest and factory owners in a favorable political position. Another claim from previous works is that the local courts, in general, constituted a place for settling local natural resource conflicts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The two research questions extracted from this are: What role did formal political and legal institutions play in managing conflicts about natural resource use? What disagreements occurred in the different parts of the sawmill industry's production chain? The aim is to better understand natural resource conflicts between the local community and the sawmill industry, across the production chain, in the county of Västernorrland, 1863-1906. To capture the regional differences, I study one industrial municipality – Gudmundrå, and one raw material municipality – Junsele. An iterative methodological approach is used. I find that the local government was not a significant arena for natural resource matters, in contrast to what could be intuitively expected from the literature. Sawmill companies did use their politically dominant position to influence the local community, however not in matters of resource management in this case. The local court was more important. These conflicts were often about property rights regarding contracts and the use of waterways and forestland, and damages imposed by this. Local farmers often initiated cases. This is in line with what the literature suggested on the role of local courts as the arena for settling private economic matters among locals. However, the nature of the conflicts changed over time and differed vastly between the two geographical areas. The results show that the conflict types were different in Gudmundrå and Junsele due to their geographical location, which provided a ground for different links of the sawmill value chain. The results also reveals that key institutional changes were characterized of both top-down and bottom-up processes. One example is local farmers who were involved in the processes of setting the terms for log driving routes. They served as an important link of the value chain that connected the raw materials to the saw mill industry’s production.
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- Lantz, Gunnar, 1984-
(författare)
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An indirect route to equality : taxing consumers to build the Swedish welfare state
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The question of who paid for the welfare state in postwar Sweden has been subject to extensive debate. Many have focused on the comparatively high, and steeply progressive, taxes on income. Others have claimed that low and middle earners paid disproportionately more, pointing to the comparatively high revenue share of value added tax (VAT) for instance. No convincing assessment has been made of the extent to which consumption taxes counteracted the progressivity of income taxes. The thesis presents new estimates based on tax assessments and household surveys, which show that consumption taxes did offset tax progressivity considerably. Moreover, they were important even before the VAT. There was not a sharp break, but a gradual transition from excise and customs duties to general sales tax to VAT. The VAT meant a shifting of the weight more towards the lower end of the income distribution.This insight begs the question of what caused such a fiscal arrangement. What made postwar Sweden’s labour governments favour a tax that fell disproportionately on low earners, a core part of their constituency? Through an analysis of policy documents, the author shows that the governing Social Democrats were well aware of the dilemma. The party leaders used general consumption taxes explicitly as a ‘lesser evil’ component in a strategy for expanding the public sector and welfare systems. That aspect has previously been neglected when telling the story of this formative era. The thesis demonstrates that it deserves to be brought into a central place in that story.Corporatism remains a valid explanatory factor. The business community had an influence on determining the details of the general sales tax, albeit not the overall level. Tax reliefs on certain important inputs such as building materials and were granted after a series of appeals. The author argues that the transition from sales tax to VAT can be seen as a final solution to these protests about business inputs being unfairly taxed. The will of the domestic business community was of a more immediate importance for the switch to VAT than any potential tendency of compliance towards supranational organisations such as the EEC pushing the government to follow their edicts concerning VAT, as has otherwise been suggested.The political left in Sweden was initially against the general sales tax because of its burden on low earners. The political right opposed the general sales tax because it would increase the overall tax take, and risked becoming an all too convenient revenue machine for the government. The left changed position and began framing it as a tool for realising welfare state expansion. The right reframed it as a tool for keeping the progressivity of taxation down.
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| 10. |
- Molinder, Jakob, 1989-, et al.
(författare)
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What can the State do for you? : Relocation Allowances and Regional Subsidies in Post-War Sweden
- 2017
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of History. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0346-8755 .- 1502-7716. ; 42:3, s. 273-298
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It has been suggested that Swedish policy during the early postwar period was strongly directed towards mobility increasing expenditures, most notably relocation allowances, aimed at moving labor from north to south. While this view has dominated the academic discussion on labor market policy there is little direct evidence. We make three claims. First, the relocation allowances have to be evaluated against the regional policy. Second, by doing so we show that the mobility oriented policy was predominant only for a short period of time. In the early 1970s, there was a decisive shift towards a policy directed at stimulating employment in the north. Third, drawing on this, we reevaluate the previous view on policy making in Sweden. Our analysis suggests that the Social Democratic government acted in a voter maximizing way. The relocation allowances were introduced at the behest of the Trade Union Confederation (LO). The regional subsidies were expanded when voter sentiment turned against the perceived depletion of rural regions. However, this strategy interacted with the political and institutional environment. The new election law in 1970 and political competition from the Center Party pushed the Social Democrats to shift their policies on regional subsidies.
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