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Servants were for a long time the dominant form of labour in Sweden. To serve, at a farm or at a manor, was ever since the thirteenth century the most common way to make a living, since poor people could by law be forced to accept work for a master. Service hence replaced thraldom in Sweden.
In From slaves to servants, historian Martin Andersson explains how the regulations of the servants' lives were gradually sharpened. Labourers had to become servants under the threats of punishment and forced conscription into the army. Wages were legally reduced, while other forms of making a living were blocked. The master's right to use physical violence was increased, while the servant's duty to obey was expanded.
By the end of the sixteenth century, most farmhands and maids worked at manors or for the richest of the peasantry. They had consequently minimal chances of themselves becoming masters. Through studies of a rich material of regional law codes, court records, fine registers, royal letters and manuals for manor owners, the historian paints a rich picture of the daily lives of servants – a life formed by legal uncertainty, coercion, and poverty.

Abstract
Although most people in the past lived in agrarian communities, premodern rural migration has long been a neglected subject within the field of migration history. The aim of this study is to enhance our knowledge of rural household migration in premodern Europe. It is based on the Älvsborg lösen taxation records, in which household migration data was registered for the Swedish population during a five-year period at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The study focuses on rural household migration rates, distances and destinations. It shows that 5 per cent of rural households in Sweden moved annually, with about two-thirds of these being 'local' migrants, which is consistent with what has previously been reported for other European regions. Migration was consequentially not only part of the life-course of most individuals, but also of great importance for the rural economy and societies in premodern Europe.

In the contemporary development discussion on the causes behind the sustained economic growth in Chile since 1985, the predominant canon seldom attach importance to evolving processes taken place prior to the dramatic market oriented shift after 1973. From a long-term development perspective, however, such a view is unsatisfactory and potentially misleading because it tends to disregard the significance of institutional change and the agricultural transformation. Within a framework of long-term institutional change, a reinterpretation of the Chilean economic progress centred on the transformation of the Chilean agriculture is put forward. It is argued that ever since the 1930s a process of social change evolved that helped break down the growth inhibiting traditional institutional order. Specifically, the pressure for modernization, reaching its zenith at the time of the reforms of the latter half of the 1960s, broke elitist economic and political relations and led to agricultural transformation that portended and conditioned the effect of the shift to the market oriented regime of the 1970s and 1980s. Resumen: Más allá de las apariencias: las causas últimas de la transformación económica de ChileEn la discusión actual sobre las causas del sostenido crecimiento económico de Chile desde 1985, el canon predominante rara vez le otorga impor tancia a los procesos anteriores al dramático cambio de orientación hacia la economía de mercado de 1973. Sin embargo, desde una perspectiva de desarrollo a largo plazo, esta mirada es insatisfactoria y potencialmente desorientadora, dada su tendencia a ignorar la importancia del cambio institucional y la transformación de la agricultura que impulsó. Aquí se propone una reinterpretación del progreso de la economía chilena desde la perspectiva del cambio institucional a largo plazo, centrada en la transformación de la agricultura chilena. Se argumenta que, desde la década de los 30, se desarrolló un proceso de cambio social que contribuyó a poner fin al orden institucional tradicional que inhibía el crecimiento. Particularmente, la presión en pro de la modernización, que alcanzó su clímax durante las reformas de la segunda mitad de la década de los 60, generó una ruptura en las relaciones económicas y políticas elitistas y derivó en transformaciones de la agricultura que presagiaron y condicionaron los efectos del cambio introducidos por el régimen orientado hacia el mercado durante los años setenta y ochenta.

This text discusses possibilities for, and obstacles to, economic development in lower income countries in Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. It examines how lower income countries might 'catch up' and advantages and disadvantages of the lateness of poor countries in the development process

The authors consider how the Asia-Pacific economies have developed since the financial crises and highlight two inter-related themes: the effect of global forces on the national Asian economies and the different development paths of these economies as they jointly enter this new phase. Questions raised by the book include: * is globalization a threat to development and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific or did globalization rather facilitate and accelerate the pace of industrialization among late industrializers in the region? * is there a single Asia-Pacific development model or did the crisis show this to be false? * did the financial crisis reveal structural weaknesses in an Asia-Pacific state-led model or was state leadership already in demise? Development and Structural Change in Asia-Pacific provides a useful and relevant account of how the global economy has led to structural changes within Asian economies.

AbstractIn this paper we present the first estimate of the full income distribution in pre‐industrial Sweden (including present‐day Finland). We draw on the schedule and the individual assessments devised by the authorities to distribute the 1613 Älvsborg ransom taxation to estimate income inequality, as well as the income shares of the top quantiles and of various social groups. We find that Sweden was relatively equal compared with other early modern European societies, for two main reasons: first, because the nobility, the clergy, the burghers, and other middle‐rank social groups all held relatively small shares of the total income, and second, because the landless groups were less numerous in Sweden than in other societies. This resulted in a large share of the total income going to the relatively homogeneous group of landed peasants, who made up the majority of the population. Our study thus speaks to the political historiography of early modern Sweden, within which negotiation and collaboration between the landed peasantry and the state has been seen as pivotal to the state formation process.