nobel-laureates-from-sweden

"It is a special privilege for me on this occasion to have my name associated with that of Professor Bertil Ohlin. By the younger generation of economists we are no doubt both regarded as what in my country are now known as 'senior citizens'; but I am just that much younger than Professor Ohlin to have regarded him as one of the already established figures when I was first trying to understand international economics. His great work on International and Interregional Trade opened up new insights into the complex of relationships between factor supplies, costs of movement of products and factors, price relationships, and the actual international trade in products, migration of persons, and flows of capital. Of the two volumes which I later wrote on International Economic Policy - namely, The Balance of Payments and Trade and Welfare - it is in the latter that the influence of this work by Professor Ohlin is most clearly marked. But Professor Ohlin also made an important contribution to what now might be called the macro-economic aspects of a country's balance of payments. In 1929 in the Economic Journal he engaged in a famous controversy with Keynes on the problem of transferring payments from one country to another across the foreign exchanges. In this he laid stress upon the income-expenditure effects of the reduced spending power in the paying country and of the increased spending power in the recipient country. In doing so he made use of the usual distinction between a country's imports and exports; but in addition he emphasised the importance of the less usual distinction between a country's domestic non-tradeable goods and services and its tradeable, exportable and importable, goods. I made some use of this latter distinction in my Balance of Payments; but looking back I regret that I did not let it play a much more central role in that book"

"International trade theory has, in my opinion, given far too much attention to the effects of certain variations, for example, in duties, on the national incomes, and too little to the effects on individual incomes. In many cases, changes in the sums count for very little, while changes in the individual incomes are distinctly relevant."

"The origin of this research was an attempt to extend Cassel’s system of equations of price determination in one market to that of several trading countries. Although the point of departure is totally different, the results of that attempt (presented in chapter III) exhibit important similarities to Heckscher’s treatment in ‘‘The Effect of Foreign Trade on the Distribution of Income,’’ published one year earlier in Ekonomisk Tidskrift, 1920. There is no doubt that the author was unconsciously influenced by Heckscher’s paper both at this and at later stages of the work. The influence of this pathbreaking paper, both conscious and unconscious, has surely been particularly decisive in the development of the material in chapters I–III."

"Curiously enough, John Stuart Mill, although he must have been familiar with Longfield's writings, seems never to have touched upon this line of reasoning."

"It seems beyond doubt that the tariff policy pursued during the last half century has not raised the standard of living of the labouring classes. It is doubtful if agricultural duties increase the relative scarcity of manual labour compared with other factors, and they certainly raise the cost of living for the working classes. It is, however, true that manufacturing duties tend to depress the rent of farm land... It is on the whole not at all unlikely that the sum total of rent is reduced in countries with high manufacturing duties... In most countries, however, the sum of rents is small compared with the sum of wages to manual workers. Even a substantial reduction of the former brings only a slight increase in the latter."

"I am presently at work on a dissertation dealing with the theory of international trade and foreign exchange rates. In dealing with this, studies of the intervention of recent years in the area of trade and exchange rates of different countries is of the greatest importance. I therefore hope to be able to begin a six month study tour to Switzerland, France and England at the end of May this year. After having collected the necessary material I intend — if the economic side can be arranged — during a stay of 6–12 months in England (probably Cambridge) or possibly the United States (in that case probably Harvard University) — to work out the above mentioned dissertation as a specimen for the doctoral degree in philosophy and pursue studies in general. I have not yet any detailed study plan. That should appropriately be set up after the arrival."

"The productive factors enter into the production of different commodities in very different proportions."

"The economic history of the last half century offers two cases of serious international depressions in countries with an essential orientation towards a market economy: In the first half of the 1930ies and in the middle of the 1970ies. With some simplification one can say that in the former case recovery started after a few years without the aid of much conscious expansionist policy."

"I started [in 1921] to write on the foundations of an approach to international trade theory that was to some extent new and for which I received the inspiration during a stroll on [the popular promenade] Unter den Linden in Berlin in 1920."

"Nutrition seems to mock the achievements of economic development,"

"No authors propounded the ideas of economic liberalism in Sweden during the 1920s as vigorously as did Cassel and Heckscher, and in addition they certainly helped in no mean degree to give actual policy a liberal stamp during that decade."

"To me it is a riddle that , who for most of his life was a fanatical representative of extreme opinions in the social debate, could present a completely different personality in the scholarly context. During the period when I knew him he was the diffident seeker after scientific truth."

"Ohlin will live forever as one of the great innovators in the theory of international trade. He was also a pioneer in the development of modern macroeconomics. For fifty years he advanced the banner of the vintage second generation of notable Scandinavian economists — a worthy follower of the Swedish giants, , David Davidson, Gustav Cassel, ; a companion in arms of Gunnar Myrdal, , , Gustav and Johan Akerman; the teacher and mentor of , , and so many names that I dare not enumerate."

"It whispers; all is waiting here Kept safe for thee, year after year, Beautiful songs in thousands; Where hast thou been, where, where?"

"As when you were a child and some tremendous hurt Was pulled over your head like a sack- Glints of sunshine through the mesh And the hum of the cherry trees.But it doesn’t help, the great hurt Covers head and torso and knees And though you are able to move sometimes Spring brings no happiness.Yes, shimmering wool cap, pull it down over your face Stare through the mesh. Out on the bay, the rings of water multiply soundlessly Green leaves darken the earth."

"I was, however, more interested in steam engines than in electric ones. In other words, I was more romantic than technical."

"The scientific method I was closest to was the Linnaean: discover, collect, examine."

"We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones."

"My total experience of school was mixed, with more darkness than light. Just as my image of society has become."

"Above ground, in tropical flood, earth's greenery stands with lifted arms, as if listening to the beat of invisible pistons."

"Man bör tänka sig själv som en person som finns i framtiden och kan bedöma – fördöma eller gilla – det jag som handlar idag, det jag som håller stånd eller sviker."

"When I entered the field of space physics in 1956, I recall that I fell in with the crowd believing, for example, that electric fields could not exist in the highly conducting plasma of space. It was three years later that I was shamed by S. Chandrasekhar into investigating Alfvén's work objectively. My degree of shock and surprise in finding Alfvén right and his critics wrong can hardly be described. I learned that a cosmic ray acceleration mechanism basically identical to the famous mechanism suggested by Fermi in 1949 had [previously] been put forth by Alfvén."

"During Alfvén's visit he gave a lecture at the University of Chicago, which was attended by Enrico Fermi. As Alfvén described his work, Fermi nodded his head and said, 'Of course.' The next day the entire world of physics said. 'Oh. of course.'"

"Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory."

"The peer review system is satisfactory during quiescent times, but not during a revolution in a discipline such as astrophysics, when the establishment seeks to preserve the status quo."

"I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals."

"Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe ... every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy."

"Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science."

"There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago."

"I have never thought that you could obtain the extremely clumpy, heterogeneous universe we have today, strongly affected by plasma processes, from the smooth, homogeneous one of the Big Bang, dominated by gravitation."

"We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect."

"Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research."