Lessons from financial liberalisation in Scandinavia

The causes and consequences of the financial crises in the Nordic countries in the early 1990s are examined and lessons from this episode are extracted. The focus is on the boom-bust episode in Finland, Norway and Sweden as these three economies went into a deep recession. The lessons from the Scandinavian experience are organised under three headings: (i) how to liberalise without causing a boom-bust cycle, (ii) how to deal with a financial crisis, and (iii) the long-run effects of financial integration on stabilisation policies, growth and the distribution of income and wealth. (Comparative Economic Studies / SWP)