The 1992-93 Swedish Crisis Debate: How Economic Consensus Overturns Tradition.

摘要

In a more extensive study, presented at the RATIO Conference onKnowledge and Policy Change in August of 2011, I examined the roleeconomists played in the Swedish public debate over its financial andeconomic crisis of 1992 and 1993 (Jakee 2011). I argued that this Swedishexperience is highly relevant for the financial crises faced by the UnitedStates and Europe, post-2007. The very survival of Sweden’s famedwelfare state was fiercely debated during the 1992–93 crisis, just as theredistributive polices of Western Europe and the United States are beingdebated in the wake of their own crises.Ultimately, Sweden’s welfare state survived, but was fundamentallyreformed nearly twenty years ago. As a result, the Swedish economicconditions of the early 1990s and the subsequent policy adjustments holdinsights for current policymakers facing a very similar set of problems andeconomic constraints. For example, many of the same underlyingconditions that gave rise to the austerity measures adopted in Greece,Ireland, and Italy between 2010 and 2012, have much in common with the1990’s Swedish experience. The same is true of the monumental reformscontemplated (and largely ignored) with regard to Social Security orMedicare in the United States.