Yield and the city: Swedish public housing and the political significance of changed accounting practices

Stig Westerdahl

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2021, vol. 80, issue C

Abstract: This article discusses the role of accounting in the changes that the public housing sector in Sweden has undergone. Public housing has been the cornerstone of the welfare state, which perceived housing as a right for all. These housing policies have been challenged from the 1990s onwards, and new legislation introduced in 2011 forced the sector to further economise operations. Because observance of the new legislation supposedly relied on accounting practices, calculative practices became important. The yield metric, which originates in financial economics, became prominent due to its capacity to condense contradictory conditions and time into a single figure, thereby making assets comparable.

Keywords: Accounting metrics; Housing; Calculative practices; Time, Calculative spheres, Governmentality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:80:y:2021:i:c:s1045235420300149

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2020.102161

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