Bertil Gotthard Ohlin

@Swedish Men, Timeline and Childhood

Bertil Gotthard Ohlin was a famous Swedish economist

Apr 23, 1899

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Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: April 23, 1899
  • Died on: August 3, 1979
  • Nationality: Swedish
  • Famous: Swedish Men, Harvard University, Intellectuals & Academics, Economists
  • Childrens: Anne Wibble
  • Universities:
    • Harvard University
    • BA
    • University of Lund (1917)
    • MA
    • Harvard University (1923)
    • PhD
    • Stockholm University (1924)
  • Notable Alumnis:
    • Harvard University

Bertil Gotthard Ohlin born at

Klippan, Scania

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Birth Place

He died at the age of 80 on 3 August in 1979.

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Personal Life

The institute of ‘Stiftelsen Bertil Ohlin’ built in 1933 still continues the work initiated by Ohlin himself in research and debate.

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Personal Life

Ohlin was born into an upper-middle class family on 23 April, 1899, at the village of Klippan in Sweden, where he lived in a large home with his parents and six siblings.

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Childhood and Early life

His father was a district attorney and held a respectable position in society. His father provided him with a little private tutelagebefore he entered school at the age of seven years.

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Childhood and Early life

In school he displayed a brilliant aptitude for mathematics which was his favourite subject. He achieved his baccalaureate at ‘Halsingborg’ much earlier than other children of his age.

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Childhood and Early life

Owing to his propensity toward calculations and much to his delight, his parents suggested that he get enrolled for a degree in mathematics, statistics and economics at the ‘University of Lund’. At the university he studied under Professor Smil Sommarin and scored the highest in economics when he passed out of the university in 1917.

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Childhood and Early life

He was greatly influenced by an article that he read in a newspaper that reviewed a book on ‘Economic Aspects of the World War’ written by Eli Heckscher, who was then a professor at Stockholm Business School.

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Childhood and Early life

He applied for a jobat the University of Copenhagen and was appointed as a professor in January1925.

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Teaching Career

At Copenhagen Ohlin worked for five years, where he was influenced greatly by the humorous and highly intellectual Dr. L.V. Birck. At the university he also maintained a close rapport with his students.

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Teaching Career

In 1928 he sent a thesis to Harvard for the ‘David Well’s Prize’; however he received a letter the same year that the prize had been awarded to another economist. But they offered to print his manuscript in the ‘Harvard Economic Studies’.

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Teaching Career

Thrilled by the offer, he finished his manuscript in 1931. By this time he had begun working as a professor at Stockholm School of Business, where he was appointed as Heckscher’s successor.

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Teaching Career

It was after he joined Stockholm as professor that he began working on his International Trade Theorem, which came to be called the ‘Heckscher-Ohlin model of International Trade.’

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Theorem on International Trade

Along with his teacher he proposed a principle that laid emphasis on trade between two countries which rested primarily on two goods of production and two factors of production such as relative amounts of capital and labour.

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Theorem on International Trade

The theorem states that countries that are capital-abundant would have to pay higher wages and thus industries depending on labour would crush the economy of the country.

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Theorem on International Trade

It was appropriate for such countries to produce in abundance goods that did not depend much on manual labour such as automobiles and chemicals, and import goods high on labour-value.

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Theorem on International Trade

In contrast to this, countries low on capital and high in labour should generate goods that can be extensively acquired through labour – like textiles and simple electronics and import goods that are capital intensive.

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Theorem on International Trade