När marknaden möter staten : Hyresreglering, marknadsreformer och bostadsbyggande i Sverige och Finland 1990-2020

Sammanfattning

When the Market Meets the StateRent Regulations, Market Reforms and Housing construction in Sweden and Finland, 1990-2020 This thesis examines the long-term determinants of housing construction in Sweden and Finland with a particular focus on the role of institutional frameworks and path dependence. While conventional economic theory emphasizes market variables such as rent and interest rates as key drivers of housing supply previous research has produced mixed results. This study argues that historical institutional arrangements provide a more robust explanation for persistent differences in housing construction between the two countries. Drawing on historical institutionalism this thesis analyses how critical policy shifts during the early 1990s reshaped housing systems in Sweden and Finland in divergent ways. The study combines a qualitative institutional analysis with exploratory quantitative methods, including bivariate OLS regressions, to assess the relationship between housing construction and key market variables. To enhance comparability the analysis employs relative measures rather than absolute levels. The results indicate that traditional market variables have limited explanatory power for housing construction outcomes. Instead, the finding suggest that institutional legacies, policy continuity, and path-dependent development play a decisive role in shaping national housing capacity. The study concludes that incremental policy adjustments within hybrid institutional frameworks are unlikely to resolve structural housing shortages, highlighting the importance of coherent and long-term institutional reform.