The Stockholm School is a loosely organized group of Swedish economists, chiefly Gunnar Myrdal, Bertil Ohlin and Erik Lindahl, working from the early 1930s and drawing on the earlier monetary and business-cycle theory of Knut Wicksell. Working independently of John Maynard Keynes and largely without access to his work, the group developed dynamic demand-and-supply and monetary-equilibrium theories reaching strikingly similar conclusions to The General Theory (1936) on the case for active government management of aggregate demand, several members' contributions predating Keynes's own book. Bertil Ohlin formally named and defined the school in a 1937 Economic Journal article, 'Some Notes on the Stockholm Theory of Savings and Investment.' The school's emphasis on using national budgets and public investment to stabilize employment fed directly into the intellectual foundations of the Nordic welfare state, a deliberate middle path between an unregulated market economy and central planning.
Facts
Start YearDated to Bertil Ohlin's 1937 Economic Journal article, which formally named and defined the school; the underlying analytical work by its members dates through the early 1930s, predating Keynes's 1936 General Theory in several cases. Core TenetAggregate demand and monetary equilibrium can be actively managed through national budgets and public investment to stabilize employment, a middle path between a purely market economy and central planning. 1 Disputed
End YearSources describe the school as a loosely organized group that worked together primarily in the 1930s; 1939 is used here as the decade close rather than a single agreed disbanding year, since individual members (Ohlin, Lindahl, Svennilson) continued distinguished careers for decades afterward and it is the classic collaborative Stockholm School period that ended, not the members themselves. Connections
Associated Figures and Events
Source Bertil Ohlin (Wikipedia)
Source Gunnar Myrdal (Wikipedia)
Source Knut Wicksell (Wikipedia)
Held Differently
The Stockholm School reached conclusions close to Keynes's General Theory independently and largely in parallel, not by following his lead, a genuinely separate account of the same insight rather than a derivative or a rejection of it.
Source Wikipedia
Sources
1. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationStockholm school (economics), lead section
a school of economic thought referring to a loosely organized group of Swedish economists working together primarily in the 1930s
Stockholm school (economics), Core ideas
a middle way between a market economy and a command economy
Stockholm school (economics), History
Ohlin publishing Some Notes on the Stockholm Theory of Savings and Investment in Economic Journal in 1937
Lead section
The Stockholm School (Swedish: Stockholmsskolan)
Lead section, Stockholm School (economics)
a loosely organized group of Swedish economists that worked together, in Stockholm, Sweden primarily in the 1930s
Associated With: Keynesian Economics, Stockholm school (economics), Relation to Keynesian economics
If his contribution had been available to readers of English before 1936, it is interesting to speculate whether the revolution in macroeconomic theory of the depression decade would be referred to as Myrdalian as much as Keynesian.
View the Source Knut Wicksell (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated Figures and Events: Knut Wicksell, Lead sectionQuote, Associated Figures and Events: Knut Wicksell, Lead section
He made contributions to theories of population, value, capital and money, as well as methodological contributions to econometrics.
Gunnar Myrdal (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated Figures and Events: Gunnar Myrdal, Lead sectionQuote, Associated Figures and Events: Gunnar Myrdal, Lead section
In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Friedrich Hayek for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations.
Bertil Ohlin (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated Figures and Events: Bertil Ohlin, Lead sectionQuote, Associated Figures and Events: Bertil Ohlin, Lead section
He was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1977 together with the British economist James Meade for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements.
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