Explaining agricultural growth. The case of Sweden 1700-1860 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Agricultural growth and institutions: Sweden, 1700-1860
European Review of Economic History, 2010
The dating of, and explanation for, the agricultural revolution in Europe remains an elusive research task. When and why did a low-productive pre-industrial agricultural sector turn into a fast-growing, more productive one? Unique data from Sweden, consisting of more than 80,000 observations of farm production output for the period 1700-1860, are used to calculate and explain decisive changes in pre-industrial agricultural production. Our estimations show that crop production more than quadrupled during the period studied, and from the 1780s and onwards production growth by far outstripped population growth. Furthermore, the data allow us to estimate the determinants of change at individual farm level. The results show that enclosures, markets and property rights were of significant importance. Institutional changes, affecting the incentives and the organization of production, made peasants invest in production and productivity. In a general sense this shows the flexibility and awareness of pre-industrial European peasants in exploiting markets and initiating institutional change.
The agricultural revolution and the conditions of the rural poor, southern Sweden, 1750-1860
The Economic History Review, 2016
The agricultural revolution and the conditions of the rural poor, southern Sweden, 1750-1860 † By MARTIN DRIBE, MATS OLSSON, and PATRICK SVENSSON * The social consequences of agrarian change have been widely debated. The traditional view of the lower classes becoming increasingly vulnerable due to the loss of access to resources has been met with the revisionist view that this change was counteracted by an increase in the volume and regularity of employment due to investments and new farming practices. This article address this issue by studying the agricultural revolution in southern Sweden using aggregate data at the parish level. New microlevel data on actual harvest outcomes, supplemented by price data, make it possible to differentiate between the development of the local economy and exogenous price shocks. Our results indicate a clear mortality response to harvest fluctuations in general and to harvest failures in particular. The response differed greatly between farming regions, being strongest in the areas most dependent on grain production. The response also diminished during the agricultural revolution, indicating the increasing efficiency of the local economy. This indicates employment effects in line with the revisionist view. At the same time, vulnerability to fluctuations in prices of basic foodstuffs remained high until the second half of the nineteenth century and was also quite similar across farming regions.
The wealth of the Swedish peasant farmer class (1750–1900): composition and distribution
Rural History, 2019
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 the major grain markets in Stockholm and the mining district of Bergslagen were wealthier than others, as were farmers on fertile plains and, in 1900, those living in coastal areas. Increased market access – in terms of cities and foreign demand – meant that farmers well placed in terms of geography and infrastructure benefited much more than farmers on what became the periphery. The diversity of farmers’ wealth grew, as did their financial sophistication.
2011
Demographic responses to economic hardship are important indicators of the robustness of a society, and the efficiency of its institutions. Considerable attention has been devoted to the impact of grain price fluctuations on mortality in preindustrial society. Often, prices are assumed to be a proxy for harvest outcome, and even though this might be a reasonable assumption at very high levels of aggregation it is clearly not as reasonable when looking at local communities. In this paper we study the mortality response to short-term fluctuations in local grain output, and focus special attention on the impact of harvest failures in different farming region using panel data for 274 localities in southern Sweden between 1750 and 1860. The outcomes are measured by the age-specific mortality rates, and local grain production is assessed using data from a recently assembled production database covering more than 2,000 farms (about 80,000 observations). The findings show a clear mortality response to harvest fluctuations in general, and to harvest failures in particular. The response differed greatly between different farming areas, being strongest in the areas most dependent on grain production. The response also diminished during the agricultural transformation, showing the increasing efficiency of the local economy. At the same time vulnerability to fluctuations in market prices remained high and was also quite similar across different farming regions. This shows that prices and output serve as independent indicators of the economic conditions that faced people in preindustrial society.
Between Malthus and the industrial take-off: regional inequality in Sweden, 1571-1850
The causes and extent of regional inequality in the process of economic growth are at the core of historical economic research. So far, much attention has been devoted to studying the role of industrialization in driving regional divergence. But empirical studies on relatively unequal countries such as Italy or Spain show that inequality was already high when their modern industrialization began (Felice, 2011; Rosés et al., 2010). This paper studies the extent and drivers of pre-industrial inequality for the first time with reference to a pre-industrial European economy. Using new estimates of regional GDP for the regions of Sweden for the period 1571-1850 (Enflo and Missiaia, 2017), we find that regional inequality increased dramatically between 1571 and 1750 and stayed high until the mid-19th century. This result discards the view that industrial take-off was the main driver of regional divergence. Decomposing the Theil index for GDP per worker, we find that the bulk of inequality from 1750 onwards was driven by structural differences across sectors rather than different regional productivity within sectors. We then show that counties with higher agricultural productivity followed a classic Malthusian pattern in its population dynamics when experiencing technological advancement, while ones with higher industrial productivity did not. The difference in the two sectors is what boosted pre-industrial regional inequality. We suggest that institutional factors such as the creation of the Swedish Empire, the monopoly trading rights for Stockholm and the protective industrial policy explain this exceptional pattern.
The agricultural transformation of Sweden, 1000-1300 (1997)
When I wrote my dissertation, “Medeltidens åkerbruk “ (=medieval arable farming) 1985, the goal was to go through all the source materials and identify virtually all evidence on the technology used. From this work emerged the idea that agriculture is a system, one in each individual region and time prevailing "technologically complex," and that a crucial errors technology historian done was to concentrate on a few "big" innovations. In fact, it was a myriad of small and diverse technical solutions that would be studied. In this article I make the first summary in English, and describes the new technological complex which was introduced in Sweden during the period 1000-1300. (Then I started a project about the 1500s, which were summarized in another article.)
Climatic signatures in crops and grain prices in 19th-century Sweden
Holocene, 2012
Climate and weather variation affect agricultural productivity, with consequences for both overall food availability and the wider economy. Knowledge of these processes has implications for understanding historical demography and predicting effects of climate change on societies. We studied the relationships between ambient temperature and the yields and prices of principle grains (wheat, rye, barley oats) in Sweden from 1803 to 1914. We found that the annual general crop index (a measure of overall crop yield) correlated negatively with the annual average price of the four grains. Overall temperature during the period of crop growth was related positively to general crop index and negatively to average crop price. At the level of month of crop growth, when the relationship between temperature and general crop index was most positive, that between temperature and average crop price was most negative. This strong structured relationship was found to be consistent when yields of each crop were considered separately, and indicates that the relationships between crop yield and crop price were to a large extent due to the influence of ambient temperature. Price correlations between pairs of crop species were in all cases greater than the correlation of yields. Within individual crops, correlations between price and yield were stronger for those crops for which imports were not available, and which were therefore subject to the weakest influence from rising globalisation. Our analyses demonstrate the sensitivity of historical agriculture to climatic factors, and the extent to which this affected the wider economy. It is likely that the susceptibility of agriculture to climatic risks was ascended by the concomitant climate regime, the 'Little Ice Age'. Moreover, our study period spans the period of rising globalisation, and suggests a weakening influence of prevailing weather on crop prices.