This chapter presents an overview of the development of Stockholm’s real estate prices from 1420 to 2021. It summarises the results from the three studies in thepresent volume, which present new price indices for the periods 1420 to 1630, 1630to 1730, and 1730 to 1875. Furthermore, it links together all these indices with already existing ones that cover the periods 1875 to 1957, 1957 to 1975, and 1975 to 2021, respectively. In addition, we have also gathered a few sporadic sources onsales back to 1283, only a few decades after the founding of Stockholm, which can give a very rough idea of the price level before and after the Black Death. Together, they form some of the longest existing real estate price indices in the world.

With this study, we can assess for the first time the trajectory of house prices in Stockholm over almost the full history of the city. This will not only give us insights into Stockholm ́s economic history but will also be an important source for researchers seeking to include historical real estate prices as a variable in any futurestudies.

Coronakrisens stödpaket skapar statsskulder på tusentals miljarder kronor. Av statsskuldens historia, som tog sin början i Italien runt år 1500, lär vi oss att den kan leda till depression. Men för de nationalstater som använt systemet rätt har det också skapat resurser av en helt ny magnitud.

Tack vare bevarade jord- och tänkeböcker går det att skapa sig en god bild av hur fastighetsmarknaden utvecklades över tid i Stockholm 1420-1600.

I denna uppsats undersöks priserna på fastigheter i Stockholm och Arboga 1300–1600. Fast egendom var den viktigaste materiella resursen i det förindustriella samhället, har trots det prisutvecklingen på fastigheter tidigare inte studerats systematiskt för någon svensk stad. Stockholm och Arboga är de städer som lämpar sig bäst för en sådan undersökning, eftersom ett rikt källmaterial i form av jordeböcker och tänkeböcker har bevarats från dem. Dessa källor registrerar priser på och värderingar av olika slag av fastigheter som gjorts i samband med köp och försäljningar. Omkring 3 000 prisnoteringar ligger till grund för uppsatsen. Här visas bland annat att priserna i Stockholm sjönk svagt på lång sikt och att nedgången var kraftigare i samband med pestepidemier.

Houses, yards and sheds: Real property prices in Stockholm and Arboga, 1300-1600

The article explores real property prices in Swedish trading towns 1297-1600 based on c. 2900 transactions in Stockholm and the smaller town of Arboga. A consumer price index has been used to deflate nominal prices into real values. The analysis shows that houses made of both stone and wood became cheaper over time. In Isoo prices, the median price of a stone house in Stockholm was 343 Swedish marks in the period 1297-1449 compared to 184 marks in the period 1550-1600. For wooden houses the same downward trend was evident: a drop from 84 marks in the first period to 52 marks in the second period. Part of the price decline is due to the fact that building plots became smaller, which suggests an increase in population in Stockholm. Declining real wages of labourers also exerted a downward pressure on the cost of building a house. The slightly negative long-term trend in real property prices in Stockholm and Arboga, amounting to -0.3 and -0.1 percent per year, respectively, diverges from the strong decline in land prices in Eastern Sweden. This is an indication that the towns were less affected by the late medieval crisis than rural areas were. Plague outbreaks are shown to have affected real property prices in Stockholm, where prices fell during plague years, but quickly recovered afterwards. This pattern can be taken as an indication that real property prices were market prices that reacted to external shocks. The analysis also reports tentative results of real property prices as an indicator of economic inequality. The Gini coefficient for Stockholm varied between 0.55 in the period 1297-1449 to o.58 in the period 1450-1499. This is about the same level of inequality that has been calculated for Amsterdam in the mid-sixteenth century. The Gini coefficient for Arboga was also very similar to that of the Dutch towns taken as a whole. There is no clear trend in inequality over time in either Stockholm or Arboga. Finally, the article discusses trends in female ownership of real property by investigating if the position of women in the real property market deteriorated during the period of study. Female sellers of property amounted to nearly zo percent in Stockholm and Arboga, with no discernable time trend. Female property buyers were fewer, amounting to between three and six percent out of the total before 1500 and a somewhat higher percentage share in the sixteenth century.

Snart 20 år efter införandet av euron står det klart att den gemensamma valutan medför ­uppenbara risker för välfärden i deltagarländerna. I sin nya bok varnar den amerikanske Nobelpristagaren Joseph Stiglitz för följderna om inte EU snart hittar en mer hållbar lösning på sin ekonomiska politik.

The article is inspired by an idea from Eli Heckscher that the Viking Age in Sweden was followed by a long period of economic decline. That sugestion looks plausible when studing monetary conditions 800-1200.

This essay scrutinizes Swedish legislation 1220-1360 from an institutional economic point of view inspired inter alia by Douglass C. North. Several books of law for different counties (sw. landskapslagar), as well as other kind of legislation, were worked out during the period and it was claimed that they were drafted to meet a changing society. My conclusion is that the real purpose was the opposite, i.e. that the upper strata tried to change society through legislation. In general were economic institutions hostile to a free exchange in favour of several compulsory institutions as slavery and serfdom, with the remarkable exception of the Town Law (sw. Stadslagen) in the 1350's that points in a modernizing direction. I've also come to the conclusion that the famous Swedish mining sector (sw. bergsbruket) came into being in spite of the ruling aristocratic classes. Much more was it a creation of gentile men and women witch in the fifteenth century contributed to the formation of two new estates in the Swedish parliament, burghers and peasants.