Who Came First: Politicians or Academic Economists?

Journal title HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY
Author/s Johan Lonnroth
Publishing Year 2013 Issue 2013/1
Language Italian Pages 20 P. 121-140 File size 111 KB
DOI 10.3280/SPE2013-001007
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In this text an analysis is presented concerning who were first to form and accept new macroeconomic policy ideas in Sweden: economic politicians or professional economists. Those ideas were later to be accepted in international mainstream economics. Four paradigmatic shifts, all of them connected to economic - unemployment and/or inflation - crises, are studied: 1) The so called New Economics in the 1930s; 2) the forming of the Rehn & Meidner model and its implementation in the 1940s to 1960s; 3) the gradual shift from Keynesianism to monetarism and norm based theory during the last three decades of the 20th century; 4) the effects on economic thinking of the crisis in 2008/09. The result is that in cases 1, 2 and 4 initiatives to change policies rather came from politicians than from academic professional economists. In case 3 the result is more uncertain.

Keywords: Sweden, politicians, economists, ideas

Jel codes: A11, B22

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Johan Lonnroth, Who Came First: Politicians or Academic Economists? in "HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY" 1/2013, pp 121-140, DOI: 10.3280/SPE2013-001007