ABSTRACT
The chapter emphasises that any decision, to a great extent, must be based upon subjective judgments and evaluations. Resale price maintenance was allowed to develop perfectly freely in Sweden right up to the year 1954, when the law of 1953 against restrictive trade practices came into force. The system of branded goods was introduced in Sweden about the turn of the century, but it was a long time before any attempts were made to apply rpm. The deliberations and negotiations resulted in rpm in its earlier predominant form, namely, with fixed resale prices from which no deviations are allowed, being made a criminal offence from 1 July 1954. The same idea appeared in another form in the analysis of the frequently propounded argument that rpm was necessary in order to prevent unintelligent consumers from wearing out several shillings' worth of shoe leather in order to save a few pennies on prices.
