Erik Bengtsson

• PhD
• Lecturer at Lund University

PLEASE NOTE! THIS PAPER WAS PUBLISHED OPEN ACCESS IN PAST & PRESENT, AUGUST 2019. READ HERE: https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz010 THE CONFERENCE VERSION FROM 2017 IS NOT RELEVANT ANYMORE. In the twentieth century, Sweden became known as a country with an unusually egalitarian distribution of income and wealth, an encompassing welfare state, and an...

In 1920, the working day in Swedish manufacturing and services was cut from 10 to 8 hours without wages being cut correspondingly. Since workers demanded and got the same daily wage working 8 hours as they had with 10, real hourly wages increased dramatically; they were about 50% higher in 1921–1922 than they had been in 1919. This is the largest w...

The distribution of national income between capital and labour is a classical theme in political economy. This paper takes a long-run perspective to the issue and asks two questions: How did the distribution of income between capital and labour develop in Sweden from 1900 to 2000? And how can this development best be explained? It is shown that lab...

This paper shows that labor's share of national income – the part that does not go to capital incomes – tends to increase when union density increases, and fall when unemployment increases, in a sample of 16 rich countries 1960-2007. The paper also explores heterogeneity between countries and over time. It is shown that the effect of union density...

This article uses a new database of 1,891 probate inventories from rural southern Sweden to investigate the development of rural households’ productive capacity from the late 1600s to the 1860s. Both labourers and farmers improved their material living standards – as measured by the contents of probate inventories – but the labouring households’ ow...

This paper, building on new archival research and the social table method, presents comprehensive estimates of income inequality in Mexico in 1895, 1910, 1930 and 1940. Inequality grew from 1895 to 1910, driven by economic expansion within the context of an oligarchic economy. While real income increased for the lower classes during this period, th...

This article compares the policy and collective bargaining responses in the three Scandinavian countries to the cost-of-living crisis that began in 2021. The countries are known for their coordinated and consensual response to exogenous shocks. However, Scandinavian variants of neoliberal reforms, the 2009 Financial Crisis and, more recently, the C...

In a large social science literature, unequal rural class structures ("landlordism") are associated with authoritarian political outcomes. This paper revisits the debate focusing on the electoral consequences of land inequality in Prussia, the locus classicus of the pernicious effects of landlordism, and Sweden, often perceived as Prussia’s opposit...

In the anthology Politiskt aktörskap i en omvandlingstid the reader meets ten people who in one way or another acted politically in the decades around the turn of the last century. Members of Parliament such as Nelly Thüring and Carl Lindhagen are studied alongside more or less free intellectuals such as Anton Nyström, Adrian Molin and Elin Wägner,...

In the anthology Politiskt aktörskap i en omvandlingstid the reader meets ten people who in one way or another acted politically in the decades around the turn of the last century. Members of Parliament such as Nelly Thüring and Carl Lindhagen are studied alongside more or less free intellectuals such as Anton Nyström, Adrian Molin and Elin Wägner,...

This timely edited volume gather’s a number of Sweden’s leading historians who specialize on the profound transformations of the late 20th Century. Each chapter starts from an image, and at the center is the “market turn” – a multifaceted, but at the same time distinct historical process through which the market as an institution, an ideal, and a m...

In the 20th century, Sweden distinguished itself as one of the most organized and participatory democracies in the world. But in the late 19th century the situation was much the opposite – Sweden had for Western Europe a low degree of suffrage, and low political participation. To explain the turnaround, this paper explores the evolution of a democr...

This paper contributes to the debate on historical income inequality, and especially on the decrease in inequality found in industrialised countries during the first half of the twentieth century. We use new archival individual – and household-level data for taxpayers in Sweden's third-largest city, Malmö, from 1900 to 1950. Previous research has e...

This chapter explores the relationship between democratization and economic redistribution using a case study analysis applied to Sweden and Brazil. We find that democratization is intimately connected to redistribution through the welfare state, but as an event in itself is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of redistributive reforms. Demo...

In discussions of Scandinavian democratisation, it is commonplace to argue that long-standing farmer representation in parliament and a lack of feudalism facilitated early democratisation. The present essay questions this interpretation in the Swedish case. It centres on a re-interpretation of farmer politics at the national level from the 1866 two...

We present new estimates of the living standards among the rural labouring classes in Sweden from 1750 to 1900. Starting with a database of more than 1,000 probate inventories of rural, landless and semi-landless people from the years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900, we study the development for crofters in particular. In a sub-sample of 120 probate inve...

This paper revisits the development of the canonical Swedish wage bargaining model, from the 1930s to the 1950s. The question at the core of the debate is: how did Sweden achieve “good” wage bargaining institutions -- good, in the sense of facilitating investment, employment, and controlled inflation? The conventional account focuses on the actions...

This paper explores the relationship between democratization and economic redistribution using case study analysis applied to Sweden and Brazil. We find that democratization is intimately connected to redistribution through the welfare state, but as an event in itself is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of redistributive reforms. Democrat...

This article describes and analyses social structure, poverty, wealth, and economic inequality in Stockholm from 1650 to 1750. We begin by establishing the social structure, using census data and other sources. To study wealth and poverty, the main sources are a complete record of the wealth tax of 1715, comprising 17,782 taxpayers, and a total of...

This article views analysis of the influence of capital–labour income distribution on economic growth from a historical perspective, using data from 1900 onwards. We study the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, where conventional accounts of the postwar growth miracles in these small, open economies have emphasized the role...

Under 1900-talet blev Sverige världens jämlikaste land. Inkomstfördelningen var jämn, klassresorna många och det politiska deltagandet stort och relativt jämnt fördelat i befolkningen. Sverige var ett föregångsland som debatterades över hela världen som en förebild eller ett skräckexempel. Men hur kom det sig att just Sverige blev så jämlikt? Akad...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the labor-capital split in national income for 20 countries since the late 1800s. Our main identification strategy focuses on unique historical quasi-experimental events: i) the introduction of universal suffrage, ii) close election wins of left-wing governments, iii) decolonization, iv) unionization shocks,...

This paper, building on new archival research, presents the first comprehensive estimates of income inequality in Mexico before 1950. We use the social tables method of combining census information with group-level income data to reconstruct Mexican incomes and their distribution for four benchmark years, 1895, 1910, 1930 and 1940. The Gini coeffic...

Sweden was unique in early modern Europe, in that its parliament included a peasant farmer estate. It is commonplace in Swedish and international research to consider the peasant farmer politicians as guarantors of a liberal and egalitarian path of development. In the Swedish-language literature on political history, these people are often seen as...

This paper maps social structure, poverty, wealth and economic inequality in Stockholm from 1650 to 1750. We begin by establishing the social structure, using census data and other sources. To study wealth and poverty, the main sources are a sample from the wealth tax of 1715, and probate inventory samples from 1650, 1700 and 1750. These provid...

Using about 1,730 probate inventories, this article studies the wealth of peasant farmers in Sweden for the years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. Average wealth grew rapidly, tripling over the nineteenth century, but it did not grow equally: the Gini coefficient for the farmers’ wealth grew from 0.46 in 1750 to 0.73 in 1900. Farmers who lived close to t...

We present the first comprehensive, long run salary information on Swedish middle-class employees before the twentieth century. Our data include, for instance, school teachers, professors, clerks, policemen and janitors in Stockholm and Sweden, ca. 1830–1940. We use the new data to compare the annual earnings of these middle-class employees with th...

During the twentieth century, Sweden became known as a country with an unusually egalitarian distribution of income and wealth, an encompassing welfare state, and an exceptionally strong social democracy. It is commonplace among historians and social scientists to consider these equal outcomes of the twentieth century as the logical end result of a...

The global financial crisis has highlighted the importance of financial factors on economic performance. Most of the existing research analyses the post-World War 2 experience, and especially the 1980s onwards. This paper investigates the effects of stock prices, real estate prices and debt on consumption and investment expenditures by estimating c...

We present the first comprehensive, long run salary information on Swedish middle-class employees before the twentieth century. Our data include school teachers, professors, clerks, policemen and janitors in Stockholm 1830–1935. We use the new data to compare the annual earnings of these middle-class employees with the annual earnings of farm worke...

We present the first comprehensive, long-run estimates of Finnish wealth and its distribution from 1750 to 1900. Using wealth data from 17,279 probate inventories, we show that Finland was very unequal between 1750 and 1850; the top decile owned about 90% of total wealth. This means that Finland was more unequal than the much wealthier economies Br...

Abstract Using about 1,730 probate inventories, this paper studies the wealth of peasant farmers in Sweden for the years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. The Gini coefficient for the farmers’ wealth grew from 0.46 in 1750 to 0.73 in 1900. Average wealth grew rapidly, tripling over the nineteenth century. Looking in greater depth at four local areas (Kull...

This article studies the long-run relationship between the capital share in national income and top personal income shares. Using a newly constructed historical cross-country database on capital shares and top income data, we find evidence on a strong, positive link that has grown stronger over the past century. The connection is stronger in Anglo-...

Sweden was unique in early modern Europe, in that its parliament included a peasant farmer estate. It is commonplace in Swedish and international research to consider the peasant farmer politicians as the guarantee of a liberal and egalitarian path of development. On the other hand, in the Swedish-language political history literature, the peasant...

The role of the European nobility and their ability to retain their political and economic power are part of the debate on the modernization of Europe’s economy. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the wealth of the Swedish nobility as the country evolved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. We use a sample of 200+ probate i...

The standard account of the origins of export industry wage leadership in Sweden focuses on the 1930s and the emergence of a cross-class alliance. This account, associated especially with Peter Swenson (1989, 1991, 2009), was launched in the 1980s and 1990s and was in part a correction of the previous focus on conflicts between workers and capitali...

Wage restraint plays an important role in the conventional economic history explanation of the post-war golden growth experience of industrialized economies. Conversely, wage increases harming investment and increasing unemployment have been proffered as explanations for some of the high unemployment during the interwar period. This article argu...

This article examines the evolution of wealth inequality in Sweden from 1750 to 1900, contributing both to the debate on early modern and modern inequality and to the general debate on the pattern of inequality during industrialization. The pre-industrial period (1750–1850) is for the first time examined for Sweden at the national level. The study...

Sweden was unique in Europe in the early modern period, in that its parliament included a peasant farmer estate. It is commonplace in Swedish and international research to consider the peasant farmer politicians as the guarantee of a liberal and egalitarian path of development. On the other hand, in the Swedish-language political history literature...

One of the major ways in which economic inequality can increase is when the development of wages of ordinary workers trail productivity and GDP growth, meaning that the increasing riches fall in the hand of other social groups (top employees, owners of land and capital). This paper investigates the relationship between wages and GDP in Denmark, Nor...

In this paper we reflect upon the state of Swedish labor market history by using Christer Lundh's synthesis Spelets regler as a point of departure. In particular, we discuss three main themes: (1) the relationship between economic structures and institutions, (2) power and income distribution, and (3) flexibility and segmentation. In future researc...

An influential interpretation of the strong growth performance in Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s stresses the importance of wage restraint, trade unions holding back wages to increase investments. This article questions that interpretation, using a wage regression approach with eighty-five to ninety-six years of data on wages, inflation, une...

This paper relates the financial and monetary dimensions of the contemporary economic crisis to working-class agency via a central concern of classical political economy: the distribution of surplus between the chief factors of production. The fall in the wage share of value added is now accepted as a stylised fact in the empirical economic literat...

The income distribution between capital and labour is understudied within industrial relations. This article investigates the relationship between union density, taken as an indicator of the bargaining power of unions, and the wage share of national income in 16 advanced capitalist economies since 1960. It is shown that overall there is a positive...

This article studies conflicts in the Swedish Labour Court that have occurred between trade unions and companies concerning the pay and working conditions for European Union migrant workers in Sweden during the period 2004–2010. During this period, unions and employers entered into disputes over: unions’ rights in Sweden to be consulted when a comp...

The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 increased the flows of workers across national borders within the unions, making action against social dumping an increased priority for unions. Which factors influence unions’ choices of strategies against wage dumping? Research has shown that in a cross-national perspective, unions with stronger insti...