The ‘Wigforss Connection’: the Stockholm School vs. Keynes debate revisited

Abstract

Drawing on archival material and previously unexplored texts, this article attempts to revise our understanding of the emergence of a new macroeconomic discourse in the Swedish 1930s. Firstly, it is argued that the Stockholm School played a secondary role in shaping Sweden's counter-cyclical policies during the depression. The Minister of Finance, Ernst Wigforss, possessed all the theoretical tools he needed before the academic economists had made their views on the crisis publicly known. Secondly, it will be argued that Wigforss was the one closest to anticipate the General Theory, and that he had his theoretical system for a counter-cyclical fiscal policy worked out in 1931 already. He provides an important link in one of the most debated topics in the history of macroeconomic thought. In an allusion to Axel Leijonhufvud, this link is named the ‘Wigforss Connection’.