Combining Keynes and Schumpeter. Ingvar Svennilson’s contribution to the Swedish growth school and modern economics

Abstract.

In a study of European growth in the interwar period, the Swedish economist Ingvar Svennilson integrated a Keynesian theory of demand-led cumulative growth with a Schumpeterian analysis of transformation. Today, Svennilson is seen, together with the Schumpeterian economists Johan Åkerman and Erik Dahmén, as members of a unique Swedish growth school. A combination of Keynes and Schumpeter with Svennilson as a mediator has been facilitated by neo-Schumpeterian theories of demand-led innovations. But it has been obstructed by a hypothesis in the Schumpeterian tradition that productivity growth is stimulated by low aggregate demand and by Svennilson’s strong commitment to “Verdoorn’s Law” which actually is Svennilson’s Law. However, Svennilson’s analyses of the importance of short-run imbalances for economic growth and the existence of imperfect capital markets discriminating progressive new firms have direct equivalences in modern macroeconomics. Svennilson’s main contributions to economics of today are his syntheses between macroeconomic and structural analysis, short and long run theoretical perspectives and, more basically, between theoretical and empirical research.