Despite minimal formal barriers to entry, the Swedish food retail sector has remained highly concentrated for over seven decades. Since the 1950s, two dominant actors, the privately held ICA Group and the cooperative KF, have continuously controlled approximately 75 percent of the market and the big three over 90 %. This paper draws on extensive archival material from corporate and government sources to explore how this duopoly was maintained. It argues that ICA and KF employed a range of non-market strategies to preserve the existing market structure, including political lobbying, collusion with policymakers, preferential access to store locations, and influence over competition policy. These strategies exemplify a corporatist mode of regulation that helped insulate the sector from liberalizing pressures and structural change.
- Stability by Design: The Political Economy of Market Concentration in Swedish Food Retail, 1950–1975
- Erik Lakomaa - Stockholm School of Economics, Institute for Economic and Business History Research
- Swedish Economic History Meeting, 16th (Umeå, Sweden, 2025-10-08–2025-10-10)
- Institute for Economic and Business History Research
- English
- Conference paper