Does Sovereign Risk Differ for Domestic and Foreign Investors? Historical Evidence from Scandinavian Bond Markets

This paper shows that geographical investor heterogeneity strongly influences sovereign risk. While standard sovereign debt models mainly attribute the absence of sovereign defaults to foreign creditor retaliation, a new theoretical literature argues that domestic creditors also affect borrowing governments’ default decisions through channels of domestic politics. This paper examines this controversy using a newly assembled dataset on cross-listed Scandinavian sovereign yields traded at markets that abruptly went from integration to segmentation by capital controls and World War II. The results strongly suggest that domestic and foreign bond investors assessed different sovereign risks whereas more standard explanations based on macroeconomic factors, portfolio choice or risk aversion added little explanatory value. The study also documents large effects on recorded asset prices from institutional trading constraints (e.g., price limits), an issue largely neglected by previous research in historical long-run asset returns.Sovereign risk; Investor heterogeneity; Market segmentation; Domestic debt; Political economy; Historical finance; Cliometrics

Why Does Sovereign Risk Differ for Domestic and Foreign Investors? Evidence from Scandinavia, 1938­­–1948

Recent theoretical models suggest that the costs governments face when defaulting on their domestic and external debt may differ considerably. This paper examines if this proposed cost difference is reflected in sovereign risk spreads across domestic and foreign markets. Specifically, I analyze market yields on Danish government debt in both Denmark and Sweden during 1938–1948, i.e., a period full of political shocks as well as a wartime segmentation of Scandinavian capital markets. By linking the exogenous wartime shocks to changes in the costs of defaulting on domestic and external sovereign debt, it is found that these costs explain a significant part of the variation in the sovereign risk spread across markets. The result is robust to a multitude of tests and the inclusion of additional yield spread influences such as differences in macroeconomic fluctuations, portfolio allocation opportunities, local risk aversion and microstructure institutions.Sovereign Risk; Investor Heterogeneity; Domestic Debt; External Debt; Market Segmentation; Political Economy; Cliometrics

Is Swedish Research in Economic History Internationally Integrated?

This paper presents empirical evidence of the international integration of Swedish economic historians. Contrary to the claims of a recent national evaluation of the discipline, the Swedish shares of international publications and conference presentations are robustly below available cross-country and cross-discipline benchmarks. Also considering levels of research inputs, the relative underperformance of the Swedish field is alarming. Four main explanations to this situation are forwarded: 1) Being among the largest economic history communities in the world, Sweden has become self-sufficient and almost independent of the international arena. 2) The dominating research language is Swedish. 3) The dominating publication format is monographs (in Swedish). 4) Swedish economic historians are reluctant to use modern economic theories and statistical analysis to complement the traditionally dominant qualitative research methods.Economic history; Historical economics; Methodology; Bibliometrics; Research Policy; Bibliography

How Should Research Performance Be Measured? A Study of Swedish Economists

Billions of euros are allocated every year to university research. Increased specialisation and international integration of research and researchers has sharply raised the need for comparisons of performance across fields, institutions and individual researchers. However, there is still no consensus regarding how such rankings should be conducted and what output measures are appropriate to use. We rank all full professors in a particular discipline, economics, in one European nation using seven established, and some of them commonly used, measures of research performance. Our examination shows both that the rank order can vary greatly across measures, and that depending on the measure used the distribution of total research out-put is valued very differently. The renowned KMS measure in economics stands out among the measures analysed here. It exhibits the weakest correlation with the others used in our study. We conclude by giving advice to funding councils and others assessing research quality on how to think about the use of both quantitative and qualitative measures of performance.Impact of research; Ranking; Research productivity; Bibliometrics; Impact Factor

The Evolution of Top Incomes in an Egalitarian Society; Sweden, 1903–2004

This study presents new homogenous series of top income shares in Sweden over the period 1903–2004. We find that, starting from levels of inequality approximately equal to those in other Western countries at the time, the income share of the Swedish top decile drops sharply over the first eighty years of the twentieth century. Most of the decrease takes place before the expansion of the welfare state and by 1950 Swedish top income shares were already lower than in other countries. The fall is almost entirely due to a dramatic drop in the top percentile explained mostly by decreases in capital income, while the lower half of the top decile – consisting mainly of wage earners – experiences virtually no change over this period. In the past decades top income shares evolve very differently depending on whether capital gains are included or not. When included, Sweden’s experience resembles that in the U.S. and the U.K. with sharp increases in top incomes. Excluding capital gains, Sweden looks more like the continental European countries where top income shares have remained relatively constant. A possible interpretation of our results is that Sweden over the past 20 years has been a country where it is more important to make the right financial investments than to earn a lot to become rich.Income inequality; Income distribution; Wealth distribution; Top incomes; Welfare state; Sweden; Taxation; Capital gains

The Evolution of Top Incomes in an Egalitarian Society: Sweden, 1903–2004

This study presents new homogenous series of top income shares in Sweden over the period 1903 to 2004. We find that, starting from higher levels of inequality than in other Western countries, the income share of the Swedish top decile drops sharply over the first eighty years of the century. The fall is almost entirely due to a dramatic drop in the top percentile, while the lower half of the top decile experiences virtually no change over this period. Most of the decrease takes place before the expansion of the welfare state, in fact, by 1950 Swedish top income shares were already lower than in other countries. In the past decades the Swedish top income shares developed very differently depending on whether capital gains are included or not. Including them, Sweden’s experience resembles that in the U.S. and the U.K. with sharp increases in top incomes, whereas excluding them Sweden looks more like the Continental European countries where top income shares have remained relatively constant. A possible interpretation of our results is that Sweden over the past 20 years has become a country where it is more important make the right investments than to have a high salary to become rich.Income inequality; Income distribution; Wealth distribution; Top incomes; Welfare State; Sweden; Taxation; Capital gains

How Should Research Performance be Measured? A Study of Swedish Economists

Billions of dollars are allocated every year to university research. Increased specialisation and international integration of research and researchers has sharply raised the need for comparisons of performance across fields, institutions and individual researchers. However, there is still no consensus regarding how such rankings should be conducted and what output measures are appropriate to use. We rank all full professors in a particular discipline, economics, in one country using seven established, and some of them commonly used, meas-ures of research performance. Our examination shows both that the rank order can vary greatly across measures, and that depending on the measure used the distribution of total research output is valued very differently.Impact of Research; Ranking; Research Output; Research Productivity; Bibliometrics; Google Scholar; h-index; Impact Factor; SSCI

Common Trends and Shocks to Top Incomes – A Structural Breaks Approach

In this paper we use newly compiled top income share data to estimate common breaks and trends across countries over the twentieth century. By using the most re-cent structural breaks techniques, our approach both confirms previous notions and offers new insights. In particular, the division into an Anglo-Saxon and a Continental European experience does not seem to be as clear cut as previously suggested. Some continental European countries have had increases in top income shares, just as in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but typically with a lag. Most notably, we find that the Nordic countries display a marked “Anglo-Saxon” pattern, with sharply increased top income shares. Unlike in the Anglo-Saxon countries, however, including realized capital gains seems important in these countries. Our results help inform theories about the causes of the recent rise in inequality.Top Incomes; Income Inequality; Economic Development; Common Structural Breaks

International Financial Liberalization and Industry Growth

The growth effects of international financial liberalization and integration are investigated using the methodology and data developed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). The main result is that industries highly dependent on external financing do not experience higher growth in value added in countries with liberalized financial markets. Liberalization does, however, increase the growth rates of both production and firm creation among externally dependent industries - given that the countries have reached a relatively high level of financial development. These results are consistent both with increased competition and increased outsourcing. Some preliminary evidence point towards the latter explanation.Financial Liberalization; Financial Integration; Economic Growth

Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden 1873–2005

We study the development of wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the begin-ning of industrialization until present day. Our series are based on a wide array of new evi-dence from estate- and wealth tax data, estimates of foreign and domestic family firm-wealth and of pension and social security wealth. We find that the Swedish wealth concentration was at a historically high level in the agrarian state and that it did not change much during early in-dustrialization. From World War I up until about 1950, the richest percentile lost ground to the rest of the top wealth decile where relatively income rich households accumulated new wealth. In the postwar period, the entire top decile lost out relative to the rest of the population, much due to the spread of owner-occupied housing. Around 1980, wealth compression stopped and inequality increased. We introduce new ways of approximating the effects of international flows and find that the recent increase in Swedish wealth inequality is likely to be larger than what official estimates suggest.Wealth concentration; Wealth distribution; Inequality; Income distribution; Sweden; Welfare state; Pension wealth; Augmented wealth