52 Sweden
Schwartz
Sweden has an abundance of large, mature Mark II type firms. Yet these have gradually hollowed out actual production in favor of simply generating intellectual property. The extreme case here is Volvo. Its old automobile capacity was sold first to Ford and then to the Chinese holding company Zhejiang Geely.5 Geely relies on Swedish engineering talent to design the new Volvo electric vehicle line (including Polestar), but production has largely shifted outside of Sweden. Similarly, Swedish pharmaceutical giants Pharmacia and Astra respectively ended up controlled by Pfizer (USA) and AstraZeneca (UK). As noted above, the big Swedish manufacturing firms have steadily reduced employment. Like Israel, Sweden is increasingly a hunting ground for foreign multinational firms looking for talented individuals. This sustains high-wage employment—at least for some. But it also means the profits end up somewhere else, and large Mark II firms that might anchor a research network are harder to form.