Erik Lakomaa

Recent advances in large-scale digitisation have created new opportunities for economic and business historians who work with substantial bodies of qualitative archival material. Although historical datasets of around 10,000 to 100,000 observations are modest compared to conventional big data, they present similar information processing challenges and make it possible to apply a wide range of machine learning techniques. In this paper, we show how relational databases can provide the necessary infrastructure for preparing, structuring, and analysing large qualitative historical datasets, and how they support the effective use of machine learning tools, including Large Language Models (LLMs). We draw on a research program that has collected more than 114,000 digitised documents from over 30 archives. Our relational database design enables us to structure unstructured sources, standardise metadata, link documents to events and actors, and create longitudinal datasets that can be used for supervised learning, topic modelling, document classification, and embedding-based similarity searches. We also assess the value and limitations of LLMs in historical research. LLMs can accelerate tasks such as document triage, entity recognition, thematic grouping, and preliminary coding. At the same time, they introduce risks related to hallucinations, opaque reasoning processes, and difficulties in tracing the evidentiary basis of outputs. We argue that relational databases reduce these risks by retaining document-level traceability, by making the full set of consulted sources transparent, and by allowing researchers to verify and reinterpret AI-assisted results by saving the epistemological chain of tentative AI suggestions and subsequent researcher validation. Our contribution is an empirically grounded demonstration of how qualitative big data, relational databases, and machine learning methods can be combined to advance economic history, along with a discussion of the safeguards needed to ensure these tools are used responsibly.

Innovation often takes place in entrepreneurial ecosystems. We use the history of the Silicon Valley venture capital model and the Hollywood motion picture industry to illustrate how specialized institutions that regulate these entrepreneurial ecosystems emerged through actions by business entrepreneurs, rather than being designed by policymakers. Schumpeterian entrepreneurs not only create new companies; they also create new institutions as an integral part of the restructuring process. At times, efforts of identifiable entrepreneurs are crucial, while in other instances institutional change results from a Hayekian process of emergence fueled by business entrepreneurs’ efforts. Some institutions remain informal, whereas others become formalized. The greater room to forge institutions through business practices may in part account for the higher rates of entrepreneurship observed in common law countries. 

During the 1990s, three of the major Scandinavian media groups entered new markets, two of them – Swedish Bonnier Group through Dagens Industri - and the Stenbeck Group through Metro came to use new internationalization models (and business models) which later became widely copied by other media companies. At the same time, Norwegian Schibsted chose to enter new markets through a traditional acquisition model. However, despite initial successes, both Dagens Industri and Metro withdrew from the new markets, in many cases following major losses. Schibsted came out better. Using case studies based on archival and oral history sources from the three media groups I study the internationalization processes, and through synchronous and diachronic comparative analysis, examine why the different media companies chose the strategies they chose, what were the success factors and why the new internationalization strategies, despite initial successes, failed to produce the intended long-term results for the two companies that used them. There are many cases where media companies have entered new markets. However, these available Scandinavian company cases are rather unique in that the accounted for a significant portion of the media market in their home markets, shared the same (or similar) institutional environment, internationalized close in time, had access to the same (newly opened Eastern European) markets. The combination of conditions makes it possible to make a substantial and general contribution to research on an important but difficult study, as well as to the theory of internationalization. Since the home markets of the aforementioned companies were small language areas and they could therefore not internationalize by (like newspapers like the Financial Times or International Herald Tribune) distributing existing products across borders. Instead, two of the companies studied internationalized by taking the) very unusual step to publish more or less adapted editions of an existing newspaper, but in a language other than the original publication. This makes Metro’s and Dagens Industri's internationalization strategies interesting in themselves. We have found that local entrepreneurs, particularly the self-organization among these entrepreneurs, played an important role when the newspaper companies entered new markets. It is also found that business models in the newspaper industry that focus on the search for local knowledge are driving the success of market entry. Further, we also found that the organization of the media group, the degree of autonomy among the foreign ventures, the differences in corporate culture – and previous experiences of internationalization – shaped the choices of entry modes and the outcome of the ventures.

Research on schools’ work environment highlights socioeconomic conditions (SES) as primary drivers of work environment, but evidence to date is primarily limited to cross-sectional samples. Research on school competition has revealed important effects on educational outcomes, but effects on work environment are largely unknown. We bridge these literatures by studying the work environment in all Swedish junior high schools and high schools using detailed data on complaints and incidences of disorder, including violence. Comparing educational levels to gauge differences in degree of choice made possible by competition, we overall find more adverse work environment in junior high schools facing stronger school competition and with many low-SES students in either the school or the region. Conversely, we find better work environment in high schools facing stronger school competition, and in high schools with a large share of students with foreign background. To assess causal effects of competition on work environment we compare regions that introduced competition versus those that have not in a difference-in-difference framework. In such regions only complaints in high schools decrease after competition is introduced. We highlight the importance of including multiple measures of both competition and work environment.

Denna rapport behandlar sambandet mellan konkurrens och arbetsmiljö i skolan, det senare en fråga som har stor relevans genom trenden av ökat anmält missnöje, olyckor, våld och andra grova arbetsmiljöproblem i skolan. I Sverige saknas i stor utsträckning forskning om våld i skolor, detsamma gäller långtidsstudier om arbetsmiljöns betydelse. Det finns emellertid omfattande socialmedicinsk och socialpsykologisk forskning där man baserat på enkäter och intervjuer undersökt arbetsmiljö och hälsa bland svenska elever. Resultaten av dessa studier indikerar att skolors psykosociala arbetsmiljö i hög utsträckning påverkarbådeelevers välbefinnande och deras skolprestationer. Upplevd arbetsmiljö tenderar även att samvarieramed skolans elevsammansättning. Dessa befintliga studier om arbetsmiljö och våld i skolor är regelmässigt baserade på tvärsnittsdata över elever, men de inkluderar sällan variabler kopplade till skolan som organisationsform eller hur konkurrens mellan skolor påverkar såväl elevsammansättning som arbetsmiljö. Det innebär att det finns ett behov av studier som även tar hänsyn till detta. Vår studie behandlar sålunda en negligerad men teoretiskt och praktiskt viktig konsekvens av förändradekonkurrensvillkor, nämligen påverkan på elevers och lärares arbetsmiljö. Brister i arbetsmiljö riskerar att ge såväl kortsiktiga konsekvenser på elevers välbefinnande och skolbetyg, och långsiktiga konsekvenser på hälsa och livskvalitethos både elever och lärare. Arbetsmiljö kan samtidigt även vara en konkurrensfaktor, där god arbetsmiljö används för att locka elever till skolan. I denna deskriptiva rapport redogör vi för de teoretiska sambanden mellan skolkonkurrens och arbetsmiljö, samt för tidigare forskning om arbetsmiljö i såväl svenska som utländskaskolor. Teoretiskt är vår analys grundad i Hirschmans (1970) teori om voice och exit. Utifrån denna kan man inte a priori se hur konkurrens påverkar klagomål (voice) eftersom konkurrens både kan öka klagomål, eftersom en konkurrensutsattverksamhet, till skillnad från en monopolist, har starkare incitament att lyssna på klagomål, och minska de, eftersom skolan annars kan förlora elever till andra skolor, d.v.s. exit finns som alternativtill voice. Samtidigt kan konkurrens leda till verksamhetsförbättringar som minskar grunden för klagomål. Vår undersökning är baserad på en databas vi byggt upp och som omfattarsamtliga svenska grund-och gymnasieskolor som varit verksamma under perioden 1999-2011 (4339 låg-och mellanstadieskolor, 1543 högstadieskolor och 1298 gymnasieskolor). Databasen gör det möjligt att göra jämförelser mellan skolformer, årskurser och huvudmän, men även mellan ägarformer för fristående skolor. Vi har där gjort en uppdelning av fristående skolor beroende på ägarstruktur; grundat i om skolan är koncernskola (privat huvudman som bedriver flera skolor), och icke-koncernskolor (en privat huvudman som driver endast en skola). Vår data möjliggör också jämförelser mellan kommuner som inte haft skolkonkurrens, med sådana som har konkurrens eller som under perioden övergått till konkurrens. Vi kan även studera olika grader av konkurrens, grundat i antagandet att skolor med olika huvudmän, ägarformer eller programinriktningar utövar olika konkurrenstryck på existerande skolor. Vår studie studerar dessa förhållanden och samband på skolnivå och vi analyserar skolor som organisationer. Detta skiljer vår studie från de som studerar skolfrågor på individ-eller kommunnivå. För att bättre förstå skolkonkurrens omfattar vår studie både grund-och gymnasieskolor, och vi har genom vår data även möjlighet att undersöka påverkan av skolstorlek liksom av hur skolorna valt att organisera verksamheten. En skola kan exempelvis nå en bestämd storlek antingen genom att erbjuda fler årskurser (exempelvis 4-9 istället för 7-9) eller genom att ha fler elever per årskurs (genom fler paralleller). Organisationsvalen påverkar i sin tur konkurrensen genom att skolmarknaderna blir geografiskt större ju äldre eleverna är. Vår studie kan därmed ses som ett försök att öka förståelsen för hur skolor organiseras i en distributionskedja som sträcker sig över årskurser och skolformer, detta skiljer den från tidigare studier, vilka fokuserar på en årskurs, skolform eller ägarstruktur. Vår undersökning av samtliga grund- och gymnasieskolor i Sverige mellan 1999 och 2011 påvisar att konkurrensfrågan inte är okomplicerad och att olika konkurrensmått kan ge olika resultat, därmed påverkas även sambandet mellan arbetsmiljö och konkurrens av valen av konkurrensmått. När det gäller de empiriska resultaten finner vi att både klagomålsanmälningar och antalet anmälda våldsincidenter är högre bland högstadieskolor, än vid gymnasieskolor. Antalet anmälningar skiljer sig även åt markant beroende på huvudman och ägarform.

A monopolist may be more restricted than a company subject to competition and also be less profitable – e.g. due to demands that it provide certain services at a loss. In this paper the Swedish Telecom monopoly, Televerket’s, Videotex projects are used to analyze this phenomenon. From the late 1970: and until the early 1990s, telecom operators across the world developed and deployed Videotex-systems; new public information services usually based on dumb terminals, of which the most well-known was the French Minitel. The systems were at the time of deployment regarded as the technology of the future but they almost universally failed commercially. In this paper, using a case study based on extensive archival sources from the Swedish Telecom monopoly Televerket, and using novel digital research methods, the origins and the introduction of Videotex systems are analyzed. It is also argued that the systems initially made sense in the context of contemporary computer development and market organization, but also that most of them would rapidly have been discontinued had it not been for the monopolist logic of telecom operators. Finally, I introduce the concept of the monopolist’s curse, to explain why this was the case.

The Social Democratic Party not only ruled Sweden for most of the 20th century; they also owed of one of the country’s largest advertising groups. The company, founded as “Folkreklam” in 1947, later renamed “Förenade ARE-Bolagen” rapidly became the dominant player in outdoor advertising in Sweden, and remained in this position until the late 1980s. This paper covers the history of the company from its inception in the late 1940s to its eventual merger with J C Decaux in the 1990s. Aspects such as governance, strategy and creative development are covered in the paper, and also the importance of the men who ran the company. A central question also covered is why the company lost its leading standing and the Party found it necessary to divest itself of the company. As will be demonstrated the relationship with the ruling Social Democratic party was very beneficial for the company; both when it came to the acquisition of advertising space on billboards and in the public mass transit systems, and for acquisition of customers. During most of the company's active years there were no public tender laws regulating public procurement and Förenade ARE-Bolagen was able to win a number of profitable accounts from government agencies, regions and municipalities without formal competition.

Parallel to the formal (health) care organizations in Europe, private or public, a number of community driven care projects have emerged. They may supplement the formal organizations by reducing costs or provide care to groups that for some reason do not have access to the formal sector. Drawing on Ostromian theory of commons, and on the previous theory and research on open software development (which share some of the characteristics of “open care”) we use cases of historical cases of community driven care to examine the prospects for such project to help remedy the cost crisis in the care sector. We explore under which institutional settings “open care” is likely to emerge and when open care projects have potential to scale. It is found that open care is more likely to emerge and prosper when they build on existing organizational structures; where the participants do not need to create new hierarchies or governance structures and where they share common values. The paper may serve policy makers aiming to design institutions or regulation, that facilitate, or at least not impede, the emergence of community based care.

We review historic and contemporary cases of a surprisingly wide-ranging class of health care delivery, which we term Open Care. Examples includes historic friendly societies that provided insurance and medical services to members, co-ops, unpaid community clinics, patient groups, self-help support networks, crowdsourcing and the IT-based aggregation of medical data. The definition of Open Care is based on the production of health by communities rather than profit motives, and therefore also includes for-profit firms that rely on voluntary input. We attempt to analyze Open Care using the related literature on institutional economics in order to identify areas where community driven care projects are most likely to thrive, provide policy recommendations on how they could be integrated in the existing European health care system. The unorthodox features of open care also make it a valuable case that provides new theoretical insights in institutional economics. The concept of evasive entrepreneurship has previously been restricted to for profit firms that evade formal institutions. Reviewing Open Care however shows that the concept also fits for community based projects, though in sometimes different ways. For profit firms that evade institutions maximize profits, and often have incentives to corner evasion. By contrast non-profit evasive entrepreneurship that circumvent institutions to maximizes quantity have incentive to expand the evasion to others or remove the barriers entirely. We find that Open care tends to emerge when existing health system fails, when there are therapeutic advantages in co-producing health such as support and addiction care, or when knowledge is dispersed, such as patient knowledge about symptoms and side-effects.

Beginning just before the outbreak of World War II, the advertising industry in (neutral) Sweden began cooperating with the government. This cooperation was highly beneficial for the industry during the war as blockades and rationing caused the civilian advertising market to almost disappear. After the war, the cooperation continued, albeit in relation to primarily military matters. Later, however, the government began procuring advertising and media services on largely commercial grounds. Using documents (including previously classified records) from government agencies, trade organizations and individual advertising companies, this study presents the history of the special relationship between private advertising companies and the Swedish government. In the half century after the first examples of government advertising during World War II, distinct phases can be identified. The first phase began with the end of World War II, when government advertising was considered inappropriate during peacetime and cooperation occurred almost exclusively within the National Information Service (an organization similar to the US War Advertising Council), which prepared wartime advertising for World War III. The second phase began in the late 1960s, when the Swedish government began running large public advertising campaigns. The first campaign was connected with the introduction of right-hand traffic in 1967, and later campaigns were aimed at, for example, energy savings and public health. Finally, the third phase began in the late 1970s, when advertising developed into an integral part of public sector activities and government agencies and municipalities became major buyers of media and advertising services. In addition to the history of the relationship between the industry and the government, this paper provides an analysis of the incentives for cooperation and the influence of the public advertising market on the industry structure.