Lönnborg, Mikael

Business History 2011, 53 (2): 230-248.

Financial crises occur at regular and unpredictable moments in capitalist economies. However, an absence of shared theoretical approaches to and even definitions of the subject still plague the analysis of financial crises. This situation makes historical analysis even more important. This article compares two Swedish financial crises, one in the 1920s and the other in the 1930s. The comparison shows that despite their temporal and spatial proximity, the crises seemed to have had quite different underlying causes, links to international circumstances, severity, and government responses. The 1920s crisis in Sweden was for instance much deeper than the crisis in the 1930s, a marked contrast to the experience of most countries during these two periods. In focusing on the driving forces behind the crises, their development and governmental policies, the article also provides an opportunity to reflect on both financial crisis theories, on the current crisis and on recent historical research concerning crises.

Business history review 2008, 82 (1): 59-86.

At the end of the twentieth century, the global diffusion of one important financial service, insurance, was encouraged by deregulation, but it also encountered difficulties where deregulation remained incomplete and where there were many nonregulatory barriers to entry. International insurance was already well developed before 1914. The growth in the global insurance trade, however, occurred against a background of increasing national regulation and fiscal burdens in many countries, making international business affordable only for the largest companies with the deepest reserves. This paper offers some preliminary estimates of the extent of the international insurance trade during the half-century before the First World War, and assesses the impact of national regulatory regimes and nonregulatory factors on the development of this business. The analysis is placed within the framework of modern theories of regulation and multinational enterprise.