From Labour Statistics to an Economic Survey : Labour Question and the Emergence of a Public Monitoring System of the Swedish Economy 1893-1914

This thesis investigates the emergence and establishment of an early public monitoring system of the Swedish economy prior to the First World War. The study relies on a careful examination of the source materials with the view to map why and how the monitoring of the Swedish economy emerged, who demanded it, how the public supervision of the economy was organised and administrated and the results of the efforts. The common driving force was an increasing political interest in Sweden and elsewhere over the labour issue towards the end of the nineteenth century. In fact, the establishment of the monitoring system of the Swedish economy was largely the result of a broader international statistical respons to the labour question by the end of that century. The emergence of a public monitoring of the economy was driven by a general need for measuring the effect of industrialisation on the labour market, especially the growing problems with episodes of involuntary unemployment in the industrialised countries towards the end of the century. The thesis is divided in two parts with a total of ten chapters. It is written within a traditional narrative structure, that is, the beginning, the middle and the end. The first part examines the emergence of the surveillance of the labour market and consists of three chapters according to the narrative structure covering the period 1893-1913. The second part consists of three chapters that investigate the establishment of a monthly economic survey of the Swedish economy between 1910 and 1914, structured in the same way as the part one. The establishment of this early public monitoring of the Swedish economy should be regarded as a forerunner of the National Institute of Economic Research (Konjunkturinstitutet) 1937