ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that a long-lasting trend of regional convergence characterized Swedish economic growth. The divergence trend of the post-1980s has taken the Sweden of 2010 back to the same overall regional inequality level as in the 1930s. The chapter analyses regional GDP for 10-year benchmarks since 1860 for the 24 Swedish counties. The regional boundaries of Sweden’s counties date back to Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna’s Government Act of 1634, and until the early 2000s very few changes in their geographic definition occurred. Consequently, T. Berger et al. document an increasing concentration of manufacturing activity in the interwar period, measured at city as well as regional levels. The chapter focuses on the evidence from the GDP series from the whole period from industrialization. In 1850, Sweden was a quite poor and peripheral country, with GDP levels close to the world’s average.
