De-risking as accumulation? Housing, finance and macroeconomic (mis)governance in Sweden’s growth model
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper explores the institutional mechanisms through which Sweden’s ‘balanced growth model’ generates and sustains such phenomenal private debt volumes, expounding a mode of economic governance which Sweden has exemplified for three decades: A de-risking-centred housing accumulation regime. Said regime provides a tacit safety net for broad strata of homeowners and investors, through a confluence of institutional, macro-regulatory, tax and welfare constellations which serve to steer excess savings – including pensions – towards the housing sector, while attempting to mitigate systemic credit risk and cushion demand shocks. While analogous tendencies exist elsewhere, Sweden represents a pioneer of de-risking modes of regulatory and macroeconomic governance which assisted in generating one of the most resilient periods of secular house-price and debt growth in recent European history. However, the long-run stability of this regime – which developed in a geopolitically benign era of expanding global trade flows and low inflation – has engendered inherently destabilizing vulnerabilities.
Source: Economy and Society
Author: Timothy Blackwell
Institution: Uppsala University
Language: English
Subfield: Finance
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411929351