Early 1990s depression in Finland

[1] The depression of 1991–1993 had a deep effect on the economy of Finland throughout the 1990s, especially in terms of employment but also in culture, politics and the general sociopolitical atmosphere.

Finland experienced a strong economic boom throughout the 1980s that dragged on and "overheated" the economy, leading to the corrective contraction of the depression.

[4] Those factors led to the strong short-term growth and in turn unsustainably increased both commercial and residential property values as well as the amount of money in the national economy.

Stock and real estate bubbles created an environment in which large short-term profits were posted, leading to an artificially-inflated appearance of great wealth in the economy.

The rising price of oil in 1973 and 1979 and the increase of car use in Finland had also raised the level of the bilateral trade with the Soviet Union.

To help the export industry, Finland performed devaluations in 1991 and 1992 and so entrepreneurs who had taken foreign currency loans found themselves in a financially-disadvantageous position.

In 1995, then-prime minister Paavo Lipponen continued to operate under austerity measures, which had restricted government expenditures even for a period after the depression had formally ended.

The guiding star was the conglomerate Nokia, which focused its efforts on mobile telephony and grew into a world market leader in less than a decade.