Books
Northvoltkraschen
Northvoltkraschen tells the inside story of Sweden’s greatest corporate failure since the Kreuger era. What was once sold as Europe’s battery miracle became a textbook green bubble, fuelled by political hype, unlimited subsidies and grand promises built on someone else’s money. In this gripping investigation, Christian Sandström reveals how the dream factory unravelled, who benefitted while taxpayers paid the bill, and why the warning signs were visible long before the collapse. Dr. Christian Sandström, publicly predicted in September 2024 that Northvolt would go bankrupt within six months and missed the mark by only three days, guides readers through the illusions, missteps and hard lessons behind the Northvolt crash.
Languages: Swedish, English (coming soon)
Green Bubble Series
Green Bubbles
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Across Europe and beyond, tax-funded prestige projects that once promised green jobs and sustainable growth are now falling apart. In Green Bubbles, Christian Sandström reveals how the great hopes for cutting-edge green technology have ended in write-downs, financial losses and large-scale failures.
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Swedish
English - Coming Soon
Green Bubbles 2
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Wind turbines in Norrland are being bought by the Chinese government, Skövde Biogas is under police investigation for the smell from its slaughterhouse waste, and a group of municipal companies is off to Indonesia for a biogas adventure.
In this follow-up to the bestseller Green Bubbles (2023), researcher Christian Sandström dives back into a world of absurd detours and costly breakdowns. With humour and sharp observation, he uncovers the subsidy capitalists and opportunists flourishing in the name of the green transition.
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Swedish
English - Coming Soon
Green Bubbles 3
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Swedish singer Ted Gärdestad’s beloved Sol, vind och vatten has been recast for the green transition as Steel, Wind and Hydrogen. In Green Bubbles 3, researcher Christian Sandström once again exposes the grand projects that go off the rails while taxpayers pick up the tab.
Discover how wind turbines become financial spin machines, how supposed climate champions enjoy the good life in Luxembourg, and why today’s steel dreams in northern Sweden echo the infamous Steelworks 80 fiasco of the 1970s.
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Swedish
English - Coming Soon
Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy - Questioning the Mission Economy offers a critical, research-based assessment of mission-oriented industrial policies, questioning their assumed benefits while highlighting the risks of top-down approaches and the continued importance of independent enterprise and market-driven innovation. It has been downloaded over 100,000 times.
Language: English
Questioning the Entrepreneurial State: Status-quo, Pitfalls, and the Need for Credible Innovation Policy offers a critical examination of the global return to state-led industrial strategies in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. As governments adopt more inward-looking and interventionist approaches, the volume highlights the risks of protectionism, political overreach and misplaced confidence in top-down innovation. Bringing together more than 30 scholars, it presents fresh theoretical and empirical insights into how industrial policy shapes risk-taking, incentives and investment, while assessing the challenges posed by emerging technologies, constrained entrepreneurship and the tension between market interventions and institutional capacity-building.
Language: English
Digital disruption: konsekvenser för företagande, individer och samhälle examines how digitalisation is reshaping the foundations of modern life. New markets appear while established ones fade, and skills that once guaranteed success quickly lose their value in an increasingly interconnected world. Drawing on research from Ratio, the Swedish Business Research Institute, Christian Sandström and his co-authors show how digital disruption affects entrepreneurship, the labour market, jobs, competence needs and public policy. The book offers a clear and accessible guide to how companies, individuals and society can understand these shifts and make the most of the opportunities that digitalisation creates.
Language: Swedish
Is it possible to reconcile economic growth with sustainable development? Mer för Mindre: Tillväxt och Hållbarhet i Sverige traces how environmentally harmful emissions and the use of natural resources in Sweden have changed over time. Since 1990, Sweden’s population has grown by more than 1.6 million and the economy has almost doubled, yet carbon dioxide emissions fell by 27 per cent between 1990 and 2018. Consumption of electricity, water and energy has remained largely unchanged, meaning the economy has become nearly twice as efficient. Of the 26 air pollutants monitored by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency since 1990, 24 had declined by 2017, many of them by more than half.
Language: Swedish
How can innovation best be promoted? Based on a major interdisciplinary research program with a special focus on Sweden, paired with international research, Bureaucrats or Markets in Innovation Policy? shows that targeted interventions and firm subsidies do not have the intended effects but instead creates policy failures, government waste and rent-seeking. Instead, innovation policy should focus on supplying the right competencies and on improving the institutions of the market economy and the general conditions for enterprise. Markets rather than bureaucrats are decisive for innovation, industrial development and growth.
Language: English