The standard of living in the pre-industrial world is an interesting but challenging subject. No single method alone can solve the problem. In order to grasp the standard of living several methods must be used, and work must be done across discipline borderlines. In this paper I discuss methods...

This working paper explores the impact of the globalization process 1970-2000 on two manufacturing industries in the Gothenburg area –SKF and Volvo. Three aspects of the process are highlighted: the development of new Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the increased mobility of...

The idea of rapid factor price convergence in the latter half of the nineteenth century stems from an article from 1995 by Jeffrey Williamson. That article presented real wage comparisons of unskilled urban workers for seventeen countries. Sweden, along with the rest of Scandinavia, appeared to...

This paper presents a new price series for sugar in Sweden, or more exactly Stockholm, in a long-term perspective (1624–1900). Prior to this, no price data has been available from Sweden for this commodity. The paper is devoted to presenting source-related and technical aspects of the price...

This working paper is about how a series of business history projects was launched in the second half of the twentieth century. In connection with the 1956 centenary of the Wallenberg’s bank, the family assembled the necessary expertise to document the first hundred years. In the 1960s the...

Along with rapid growth and improved standards of living, the first decades of the twentieth century saw the introduction of new technology and new ways to organize production. There are contrasting views on what impact these developments, often summarized as the Second Industrial Revolution,...

This paper presents the Gothenburg Population Panel (GOPP), a random sample of individuals who were living in Gothenburg at some point in time during the period 1915-1943. The individuals in the GOPP were searched for every fourth year in the registers of local tax authorities. The hit rate was...

This is a guide to writing a doctoral thesis at the Department for Economy and Society, specifically directed at the unit for Economic History, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. It is written in Swedish but also applies to Ph.D. students writing in English or other languages at the...