Editing Per Jacobsson (section)

== Work at the League of Nations ==
In April 1920 he became an international civil servant, by joining the [[League of Nations]]' Secretariat, and specifically what a few years later would be known as the [[Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations|Economic and Financial Organization]]. This had a Financial Committee for which he worked, eventually becoming its secretary.<ref name=":0" />  It took on assisting cities and countries in post-war economic difficulties, including high inflation.  The committee developed a typical way of operating.  Its staff would visit a capital, research the economic situation and write a report with recommendations.  These generally included central government spending cuts and revenue increases and creating or strengthening an independent central bank to control issuance of the domestic currency.  Loans could be organized to fund government deficits before agreed-to budgetary measures took full effect.  Its work therefore was a precursor to [[International Monetary Fund]] country studies and conditional lending.  Per Jacobsson participated in this process for the [[Free City of Danzig]] in 1921, and Austria and Hungary starting in 1922.  The latter countries were lent £90&nbsp;million in aggregate, which was repaid in 1926, and their government budgets became balanced in 1927.<ref name=":0" />

Piet Clement, a financial historian, wrote that Per Jacobsson's work for the committee "left a deep imprint on his further career...because it taught him to quickly analyze a multitude of qualitative and quantitative data at an aggregated and comparative level, and to formulate conclusions and recommendations in a nevertheless pertinent and precise style."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clement |first=Piet |title=History of the IMF – Organization, Policy, and Market |publisher=Springer |year=2015 |isbn=978-4-431-55350-2 |editor-last=Yago |editor-first=Kazuhiko |location=Japan |pages=71 |language=en}}</ref>

While at the League, Per Jacobsson also worked on national arms spending data that would be comparable across countries.  This was one element in the League's efforts to limit spending on armaments and reduce the risk of a major armed conflict recurring.  His work was published as a supplement to the Economist newspaper in October 1929.  He continued his work on this after leaving the League as an outside expert, contributing to a report prepared for the [[Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments|World Disarmament Conference]] which first met in February 1932.

(After leaving the League, he returned to Sweden and worked from January 1929 to July 1930 at the Swedish Economic Defence Commission which was studying preparation for the eventuality of another war, and then from July 1930 to September 1931 as Economic Adviser to a Swedish industrial company, Kreuger and Toll.<ref name=":0" />)