Håkan Lindgren

In light of the ongoing extensive discussion concerning the increasing financial risk levels of the household sector in modern, credit-based societies, this study explores the level and structure of credit markets in nineteenth century Sweden. The growing international research focusing on informal credit markets outside formalised institutions has demonstrated that credit was abundantly and pervasively included in the lion's share of all inter-personal financial relationships in early modern Europe. In this particular study, based on probate inventories and the inverted mortality method, the changing structure of nineteenth century credit market is estimated for the living population. The household financial situation is studied as life-cycle indebtedness and as debt ratios in relation to income, wealth and financial assets and how these ratios evolved during the transformation from a predominately agrarian to a more commercialised, monetised and industrialised economy in Sweden during the nineteenth century. The source material for this article consists of more than 5800 household probate inventories from Southern and Central Sweden, including three rural and two urban areas. The geographical selection is based on a sample utilised in a wider research project. It permits comparisons of debt structures not only between rural and urban areas, but also among different regions within Sweden.

In this paper the long term viability of one of the most important Swedish family business groups, that of the Wallenberg family, is analyzed by focusing on strategic behaviour in three areas : (1) change versus continuity, (2) centralization versus decentralization in group decision making and (3) the handling of the succession problems. In all these areas it is clearly shown that there are different ways of achieving the overall objective of the family business group to survive and consolidate. Thus, to give a full explanation it is necessary to stress the importance of family values and norms. An indispensable condition for long term survival is, it is argued, the establishment and cementation of a dynamic drive, a tradition of self image which has been developed and maintained by earlier experiences told and impressed upon later generations both by story-telling within the family and, not least, by scholarly biographical research. 

This study estimates the size of the so-called “informal,” or unintermediated, credit market in one Swedish city through a period of economic transformation. In the early 1840s promissory notes accounted for more than half of the total credit market, and almost four times the value of credit channeled through the banking system. Even in the 1870s, the promissory-note market was twice the size of the loan volume of the banking system. By 1905 bank-based credit had finally surpassed the informal variety; but even then, outstanding promissory notes were almost three-fifths as great as total bank credits to noncorporate borrowers.