John Maynard Keynes’ activities on the stock market are well known. One company in which he bought stocks was the Hector Whaling Company Ltd., London – a comparatively small and little known company founded in 1928. The director of this company was Rupert Trouton. He had worked with Keynes...

The paper analyses the decline and final close down of the European Antarctic whaling industry in the 1950s and -60s. This industry had been led by British and Norwegian companies, which were now challenged by Japan and Soviet Union that completely took over Antarctic whaling for the next...

Taking whaling as an example the article analyses the problems of validity that arise when patent statistics are used as an indicator of technological change in a particular industry. The results show that in this industry the patent statistics are a reliable indicator of technological development.

The paper analyses Norwegian 19th century patentees. A special focus is on the affiliation or relationship of the patentees to the manufacturing industries, business and the wider economy. A main question is whether the inventors were what might be called ‘amateurs’ working independently, or...

Constant price calculation of service production is a problematic issue in contemporary national accounts, and it is far more so in historical series. The indicator method has been suggested as one way of coming to terms with volume calculations. This method is scrutinized, and it is claimed...

It is conventional wisdom that Sweden’s economic growth internationally seen was unusually rapid 1870-1970 and then very slow. In this paper Sweden is compared with three country groups viz. sixteen industrialised countries, six countries at the same income level as Sweden 1970, and European...

A new GDP series per capita for Sweden during 1560-1800 is presented, linked to slightly revised data for 1800-2000. Long-term stagnation up to the nineteenth century is revealed but with secular changes. Growth characterized much of the seventeenth century with modernization of state...