Networks, Performance and Cooperation in Swedish Property Insurance 1875-1950.

This file contains two working papers presenting results of a pilot study on cooperation and networks within the Swedish non-life insurance sector. The papers were produced within my PhD project which aims at explaining reasons and effects of the different ways in which Swedish nonlife insurers cooperated and networked over time. Property insurance is here regarded as a crucial service to the industries that brought about the peak of the Swedish industrialization in the late 19th century. It is in the context of their response to the evolving character of the insurance demand of an industrializing economy that the insurers developed an increasing and dense network of within industry interlocking directorates. The project is realised at the department of Geography and Economic History at Umeå University in Sweden, from where a research visit of five months has been granted to the Erasmus University in Rotterdam where I will focus on further analysis of empirical data.

The Business History Seminar is organised by the Business History Centre and has been made possible by financial support from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) and the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication