Sustainability in the making? A historical estimate of Swedish sustainable and unsustainable development 1850–2000

Magnus Lindmark and Sevil Acar

Ecological Economics, 2013, vol. 86, issue C, 176-187

Abstract: In this article we estimate the long-run development of genuine savings in Sweden during the period 1850 to 2000. By doing so we are able to present a first analysis of long-run sustainable development during a single country's transition to modern economic growth rates and high income levels. We find that genuine savings may have been negative up until c. 1910. This suggests a period of transition to positive genuine savings in conjunction with or even preceding the transition to modern economic rates. Important contributions to the transition were increasing investments in human capital, improved sanitary conditions, reduced depletion of forests and accelerated investments in machinery and infrastructure.

Keywords: Sustainability; Genuine savings; Environmental history; Sweden; Economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800912002625
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:86:y:2013:i:c:p:176-187

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.06.021

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().