The “Swedish model” in the COVID-19 pandemic
By Torbjörn Becker, Jesper Roine, and Svante Strömberg
With the COVID-19 pandemic, “The Swedish model” has come to mean a lax corona strategy instead of a well-functioning labor market combined with a wide-ranging welfare system and individual freedom that was the original interpretation of the concept. The death toll in Sweden may not be extreme on a global level even if it is at the higher end, but in a Nordic context it really stands out. The idea that this would be linked to a trade-off between economic costs of lockdowns and other measures and the spread of the virus and associated deaths is not convincing in data. Many policy measures and economic indicators are relatively similar for Sweden and other countries and there is no general picture that Sweden outperforms its Nordic peers. In the end, the pandemic may simply have highlighted a more fundamental need to revise the focus on decentralized decision making and individual freedom of the Swedish model and substitute it with a stronger central government prepared to act at times of crises.
Download the latest BSR Policy Briefing BSR Policy Briefing 9_2021 (pdf) (3.8 MB)
