By the late 1990s the Wallenbergs controlled some 40% of the value of the companies listed on the Swedish stock exchange.
Read more here.
Sweden fact of the day
Previous post: The behavioral economics of pain
Next post: Why is Medicine so Primitive?
Our Books
Modern Principles of Economics
Launching The Innovation Renaissance
The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel Better
Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World
Discover Your Inner Economist
Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding
Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial
Markets and Cultural Voices: Liberty vs. Power in the Lives of Mexican Amate Painters (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures
Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime
What Price Fame?
In Praise of Commercial Culture
Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science
Contact Us
Hopefully they’ll end multiple-voting shares. There’s evidence that
American firms with this underperform those that don’t have it.
The money quote from this week’s issue is in the article “Europe’s
Fraying Fringe”:
“Weak, deceitful, clownish, boorish, squabling, thuggish and corrupt
politicians in the east risk destroying the flagging enthusiasm of
west European voters for further enlargement of the EU.”
Hobbes, move over.
Mexico fact of the day? 46.6% of the Mexican stock market
index is currently comprised by Carlos Slim’s companies.
To avoid paralysis, corporatism produces concentration of wealth. If all of the “stakeholders” must sign off on an program before it can take place, it pays to have fewer stakeholders with larger influence. Else thing would simply not get done while waiting for the approval of all microholders.
Canada is more corporatist that America and, as expected, ownership in Canada is more concentrated than in the States, but not as concentrated as in Sweden, the flagship example of the Scandinavian Model.
“Hopefully they’ll end multiple-voting shares†. I think it is up to the shareholders to decide that and not the Government.
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden
Can someone please contrast this with the US stock market? For example, how much of the NYSE does Bill Gates own? I guess it’s not that hard to figure out: Gates is worth 40 billion USD, but how much is the valuation of the NYSE?
“Swedish law certainly does not require approval of all the shareholders before making changes in buisness practice”
The social democratic model requires consensus. In principle, all -stakeholders- must agree before something happens. Else the result is not democratic. “Stakeholder” is a buzzword. Shareholders are only one kind of stakeholder. Trade unions are also stakeholders. Like a warm fuzzy, the precise extent of the term is not clear but the idea allows people to pat themselves on the back while congratulating themselves for being concerned about more than mere shareholder value.
Which is more problematic? A consensus of 9 or a consensus of 9 million? To avoid paralysis, corporatism produces concentration of wealth and authority. Else things would simply not get done while waiting for the approval of all of the many microholders.
America and Canada are similar in many ways. One critical difference is the extent of social democracy in Canada compared to the States. Canada is more corporatist that America and, as expected, ownership in Canada is more concentrated than in the States, which demonstrates that social democracy is the source of greater concentration of ownership.
Comments on this entry are closed.