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At the end of the twentieth century, the global diffusion of one important financial service, insurance, was encouraged by deregulation, but it also encountered difficulties where deregulation remained incomplete and where there were many nonregulatory barriers to entry. International insurance was already well developed before 1914. The growth in the global insurance trade, however, occurred against a background of increasing national regulation and fiscal burdens in many countries, making international business affordable only for the largest companies with the deepest reserves. This paper offers some preliminary estimates of the extent of the international insurance trade during the half-century before the First World War, and assesses the impact of national regulatory regimes and nonregulatory factors on the development of this business. The analysis is placed within the framework of modern theories of regulation and multinational enterprise.

This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of finance and business in several countries in Central Europé and the Baltic States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History is not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these transition countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, financial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period. Eight authors were involved in the book, but most of the material was written by Mikael Olsson (researcher at Uppsala University), Mikael Lönnborg (professor at Södertörns University) and Michael Rafferty (professor in the School of Management at RMIT University in Melbourne). All three are also editors of this book

According to previous research, the insurance market accounted for a key role in the welfare policies in post war, corporatist Sweden. It became the norm that 16 insurance should be distributed in a similar way to all public utilities. However, since the industry was considered to be too decentralised and too market oriented to meet the requirements of serving the public, new regulations were introduced. Shortly thereafter, the new legislation developed oligopolistic features, which are commonly associated with inefficiency problems. Was the regulation successful in light of its purpose? By quantifying the asset flows, we examine the impact of the regulation on the market structure, the market efficiency, and the market profitability of the Swedish insurance industry.

Some twenty years after the fall of the communist dictatorships that divided the European continent the European Union in late 2009 adopted its first ever macroregional strategy – the European Union Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. The strategy was a symbolic second milestone with regard to the political endeavours to reintegrate the continent; the first being the 2004 enlargement. Having transformed the Baltic Sea from a Mare Dividum to a European Mare Nostrum is indeed also a sign of the success of such integrative political processes. However, at the same time the perceived need for a specific strategy in order to further and deepen the integration and reduce the economic gaps within the European Union gives an indication that there is more to be wished for with regard to this region. It has been suggested that regionalism is defined "as an economic process whereby economic flows grow more rapidly among a given group of states [in the same region] than between these states and those located elsewhere". In this paper we thus approach the economic underpinnings for the Baltic Sea Region by analysing the developments with regard to investment and trade flows during the last twenty years. We ask ourselves whether these developments are in congruence with the notion of the building of one integrated region and whether it makes economic sense to talk about a Baltic Sea Region? For example, to what extent have the developments with regard to foreign direct investments proved sustainable? What sectors are leading the way and which are lagging? What divisions remain to be tackled? These are some of the questions that this paper attempts to address based upon a thorough analysis of the existing sources with regard to trade and investment flows.