spillöver

Spillöver is a Swedish term that denotes overflow or spillover, both in literal and figurative senses. It describes something that flows beyond a boundary or capacity, or effects extending beyond their origin.

In everyday language, spillöver describes liquids that spill over the edge of a container. In engineering and logistics, it can refer to situations where demand exceeds capacity, creating spillover or overflow that must be managed, such as drainage systems or storage tanks. Beyond physical overflow, spillöver is used to describe spillover effects: externalities in economics where the actions of one actor influence others outside the market transaction. This includes knowledge spillovers between firms or regions, and policy spillovers where regulations affect neighboring jurisdictions. In biology and public health, spillover refers to pathogens crossing species barriers, from animals to humans, producing zoonotic infections. In ecology or epidemiology, spillover describes events that initiate outbreaks in new host species. In social science, the term can also denote cultural or technological spillovers, where innovations diffuse from one sector to another, contributing to regional development or productivity growth.

Terminology: while spillöver is common in everyday Swedish to mean literal overflow, many technical writings use spillover or spillover-effekt as the standard term in economics and biology. The two forms are often interchangeable depending on context.