IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/116938.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The formation of a nation’s leading industry: an examination of the impacts of mercantile policy on Swedish iron exports during the 18th century

Author

Listed:
  • Gabel, Lina

Abstract

There is a wide array of literature on the particular manifestation of mercantilism in Sweden during the “Age of Liberty” and there is an even wider selection of literature on the success of the Swedish iron industry. However, there is very little literature on the combination of the two, and it suffers from issues with lack of adequate data. Therefore, this paper aims to fill that gap by studying the impact of the Swedish Commodity Act of 1724, the largest piece of Swedish mercantile legislation and an adaptation of the British Navigation Acts, on Sweden’s leading industry - iron - and its exports to its largest foreign market in England. This investigation of the relationship between mercantilism and Swedish iron trade is based on the Sound Toll Registers, one of the most detailed sources on maritime trade history. The time series regression results indicate that the implementation of the commodity act successfully increased the total tonnage of iron shipped from Sweden to England.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabel, Lina, 2022. "The formation of a nation’s leading industry: an examination of the impacts of mercantile policy on Swedish iron exports during the 18th century," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 116938, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:116938
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/116938/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lars Magnusson, 1987. "Mercantilism and “Reform” Mercantilism: The Rise of Economic Discourse in Sweden During the Eighteenth Century," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 415-433, Fall.
    2. Kerstin Enflo & Joan Ramón Rosés, 2015. "Coping with regional inequality in Sweden: structural change, migrations, and policy, 1860–2000," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(1), pages 191-217, February.
    3. Haan, Marco A. & Heijnen, Pim & Schoonbeek, Lambert & Toolsema, Linda A., 2012. "Sound taxation? On the use of self-declared value," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 205-215.
    4. Peter King, 2006. "The production and consumption of bar iron in early modern England and Wales," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 59(1), pages 264-264, February.
    5. Rodney Edvinsson & Christoffer Tarek Gad, 2018. "Assessing trade in the mercantilist era: evidence from a new database on foreign trade of Sweden – Finland, 1738–1805," Scandinavian Economic History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(3), pages 226-245, September.
    6. Lennart Schon & Olle Krantz, 2012. "The Swedish economy in the early modern period: constructing historical national accounts," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 16(4), pages 529-549, November.
    7. Manish Kumar, 2018. "A method for estimating the volume of Baltic timber products exported through the Sound and its application to Portugal, 1669–1815," Scandinavian Economic History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 66(3), pages 246-263, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kerstin Enflo & Anna Missiaia, 2020. "Between Malthus and the industrial take‐off: regional inequality in Sweden, 1571–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 73(2), pages 431-454, May.
    2. Karlsson, Tobias & Kok, Joris & Perrin, Faustine, 2021. "The Historical Gender Gap Index: A Longitudinal and Spatial Assessment of Sweden, 1870-1990," Lund Papers in Economic History 217, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    3. Joan R Rosés & Nikolaus Wolf, 2021. "Regional growth and inequality in the long-run: Europe, 1900–2015," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 37(1), pages 17-48.
    4. Broadberry, Stephen & Guan, Hanhui, 2022. "Regional variation of GDP per head within China, 1080-1850: Implications for the Great Divergence debate," CEPR Discussion Papers 17457, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Palma, Nuno & Reis, Jaime, 2019. "From Convergence to Divergence: Portuguese Economic Growth, 1527–1850," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 477-506, June.
    6. Bassino, Jean-Pascal & Broadberry, Stephen & Fukao, Kyoji & Gupta, Bishnupriya & Takashima, Masanori, 2019. "Japan and the great divergence, 730–1874," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-22.
    7. Broadberry, Stephen & Ghosal, Sayantan & Proto, Eugenio, 2017. "Anonymity, efficiency wages and technological progress," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 379-394.
    8. Martina Cioni & Giovanni Federico & Michelangelo Vasta, 2021. "Spreading Clio: a quantitative analysis of the first 25 years of the European Review of Economic History [Plague in seventeenth-century Europe and the decline of Italy: an epidemiological hypothesi," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 25(4), pages 618-644.
    9. Ulbe Bosma & Bas Leeuwen, 2023. "Regional variation in the GDP per capita of colonial Indonesia, 1870–1930," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 17(2), pages 365-386, May.
    10. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro & Rodríguez-Caballero, C. Vladimir, 2022. "War, pandemics, and modern economic growth in Europe," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    11. José Aguilar Retureta, 2016. "Explaining regional inequality from the periphery: The mexican case, 1900-2000," Documentos de Trabajo (DT-AEHE) 1608, Asociación Española de Historia Económica.
    12. Kathryn E. Gary & Cristina Victoria Radu, 2019. "The impact of border changes and protectionism on real wages in early modern Scania," Working Papers 0166, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    13. Seán Kenny & Jason Lennard & Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, 2023. "An annual index of Irish industrial production, 1800–1913," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(1), pages 283-304, February.
    14. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, 2015. "World Human Development: 1870–2007," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(2), pages 220-247, June.
    15. Gary, Kathryn E. & Olsson, Mats, 2019. "Men at work: Real wages from annual and casual labour in southern Sweden 1500–1850," Lund Papers in Economic History 194, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    16. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro & Rodriguez-Caballero, Carlos Vladimir, 2020. "Growth, War, and Pandemics: Europe in the Very Long-run," CEPR Discussion Papers 14816, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Broadberry, Stephen & Korchmina, Elena, 2022. "Catching-up and falling behind : Russian economic growth,1690s-1880s," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 626, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    18. Kemeny, Thomas & Storper, Michael, 2020. "Superstar cities and left-behind places: disruptive innovation, labor demand, and interregional inequality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103312, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Nuno Palma, 2019. "American Precious Metals and their Consequences for Early Modern Europe," Working Papers 0174, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    20. Palma, Nuno & Reis, Jaime & Rodrigues, Lisbeth, 2023. "Historical gender discrimination does not explain comparative Western European development: evidence from Portugal, 1300-1900," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:116938. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.