An Introduction to Sweden
The tribe of the Swedes is first mentioned by Roman historian Tacitus in AD 98, and Swedish vikings the 'Rus' are said to have been the founders of Kiev Rus, which gives its name to modern Russia. The modern territory of the Kingdom of Sweden emerged as a unified country in the middle ages and rose to be one of Europe's great powers in the late 17th and early 18th century. Since a war with Norway in 1814 the country has pursued a policy of neutrality in war and non-alignment in peacetime, although it has strong ties to other European and western defence bodies and indeed to NATO. See full country profile.Latest Research News from Europe (Other)
GOVERNMENT: constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy
AREA: 449,964 sq km
POPULATION: 9,415,295 (2011 census)
MAJOR LANGUAGE: Official Language: Swedish
Some business and general info
The Market Research Industry
Trade and Industry in Sweden
...and yet he's famous for the Peace prize. To be fair, there are also three more scientific Nobel prizes, for physics, chemistry and medicine, in addition to literature. The prizes were established in 1895 with an endowment from Nobel's will, and first awarded in 1901. The prize for economics often called the sixth Nobel prize and first awarded in 1969 is not technically a Nobel Prize, although it's announced and awarded with the others and linked in name with Nobel - good one for a pedantic trivia game?
To our knowledge, Alfred does not have a crater on the Moon named after him (see Zeno of Citium, Cyprus), but a synthetic element - nobelium - is no doubt some consolation.
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The tribe of the Swedes is first mentioned by Roman historian Tacitus in AD 98, and Swedish vikings the 'Rus' are said to have been the founders of Kiev Rus, which gives its name to modern Russia. The modern territory of the Kingdom of Sweden emerged as a unified country in the middle ages and rose to be one of Europe's great powers in the late 17th and early 18th century. Since a war with Norway in 1814 the country has pursued a policy of neutrality in war and non-alignment in peacetime, although it has strong ties to other European and western defence bodies and indeed to NATO.
About 65% of Sweden's land area is covered with forest. As with Norway, the Gulf Stream makes it much warmer and drier than other places at a similar latitude such as Canada and Russia.Sweden, which rejected the Euro in a referendum ranks high in measures of competitiveness (2nd in the world after Switzerland), human development and quality of life, and first for income equality (the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient Gini coefficient).
GDP: $381.7bn (2011 est.) - $40,393 per capita
Religions Lutheran Church of Sweden 71.3% (2009) - but studies suggest that between 46% and 85% of Swedes do not believe in God. c.5.4% are Muslim tho again, a small % of these appear to be practising
Currency: Swedish krona; 1 SEK = $US 0.14
Telephone Code: +46
MR Association(s):
Sweden is the 12th largest research market in the world, and the 6th largest in Europe. 78 percent of MR turnover comes from domestic clients and 22 percent from international. According to the ESOMAR Global Prices Study 2012 the country was the 6th most expensive for carrying out research.
Source: ESOMAR
Sweden has a large manufacturing sector - engineering accounts for 50% of output and exports, a growing but relatively small services sector, and a very large public sector, with taxes and related charges taking 60% of a typical worker's income. Overall taxation, 51.1% of GDP in 2007, is slowly declining but is still nearly double of that in the US or Ireland. Correspondingly, the country has a higher level of social spending to GDP than any other, and provides equal and comprehensive access to education and health care.
Sweden is a world leader in privatised pensions and is little affected by the so-called 'time-bomb' ticking in many other Western European countries.
The economy is heavily oriented toward foreign trade. Exports of $204.2bn in 2011 included cars and vans, armaments, paper and pulp, iron and steel and chemicals and went to Germany (10.5% in 2010), the UK and US (7.3 and 6.4% respectively) and other Scandinavian countries (between 6 and 10%). Imports of $187.4bn included petrol, foodstuffs and clothing as well as metals and manufactured goods, and came from a similar list of partners but with Germany (18.3%) around ten percent ahead of Denmark and Norway in second and third places.
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laurence@mrweb.com
