Reykjavik on the Thames

Ásgeir Jónsson and Hersir Sigurgeirsson
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Ásgeir Jónsson: University of Iceland
Hersir Sigurgeirsson: University of Iceland

Chapter 3 in The Icelandic Financial Crisis, 2016, pp 67-101 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract When Iceland separated from Denmark in 1918 and became a sovereign nation with an independent currency, the people were enthusiastically prepared for nationhood. The economic grounds for the separation were shakier. Iceland depended on a single export industry – fishing – and was thus at the mercy of global market fluctuations. For decades afterwards, the fishing sector remained the national breadwinner. It was a shielded if simple life, but it ended in about 1989 when the North Atlantic cod stock collapsed and the fishing sector teetered on bankruptcy. The economic reforms that followed transformed Iceland from one of the most secluded, state-controlled nations in Western Europe to one of the most liberal and open, and it took just over ten years. These reforms – focused on privatization and corporate tax cuts – reaped great rewards through the 1990s in terms of new growth and prosperity.

Keywords: Balance Sheet; Hedge Fund; Foreign Bank; Investment Company; Fishing Sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pmschp:978-1-137-39455-2_3

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DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-39455-2_3

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