Sven-Olof Fridolfsson and Thomas Tangerås
We propose nuclear capacity auctions as a means to improve the incentives for investing in nuclear power. A properly designed auction (i) allocates the license to the most efficient bidder; (ii) sells the license if and only if new nuclear power is…
Henrik Horn, Louise Johannesson and Petros C. Mavroidis
The Dispute Settlement (DS) system is a central feature of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement. This compulsory and binding two-level mechanism for the adjudication of disputes between WTO Members is the most active among international courts.…
Nicholas Economides and Joacim Tåg
We compare four approaches to network neutrality and network management regulation in a two-sided market model: (i) no variations in Quality of Service and no price discrimination; (ii) variations in Quality of Service but no price discrimination; (iii)…
Johannes Mauritzen
High levels of wind power penetration will tend to affect prices in a deregulated electricity market. Much of the analysis in the literature has focused on the effect that wind power has on average electricity prices, this paper attempts to test the…
Lars Oxelheim, Trond Randøy and Arthur Stonehill
This chapter focuses on the role of corporate financial strategies to improve firms’ market valuations, and thus lower their cost of capital. The identification of successful strategies is accomplished within an overall strategic framework and related to…
Andrea Asoni
I investigate the effect of human capital on entrepreneurship using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth - 1979. I find that individuals with higher measured intelligence and self-confidence are more likely to be entrepreneurs. Furthermore I present…
Johan Egebark and Mathias Ekström
Users of the social networking service Facebook have the possibility to post status updates for their friends to read. In turn, friends may react to these short messages by writing comments or by pressing a Like button to show their appreciation. Making…
Robert E. Lipsey and Fredrik Sjöholm
This paper attempts to measure the size of South-South FDI in developing East Asia and the trends in it, and the characteristics of the investing countries and the investments themselves. It also summarizes the findings of studies in individual countries…
Erik Grönqvist, Björn Öckert and Jonas Vlachos
We study the intergenerational transmission of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities between fathers and sons using population-wide enlistment data. Measurement error bias in fathers’ ability measures is corrected for using two sets of instruments.…
Ola Andersson and Erik Wengström
It is well known that communication often serves as a facilitator for cooperation in static games. Yet, communication can serve entirely different purposes in dynamic settings as communication during the game may work as a means for renegotiation,…
Christer Andersson, Ola Andersson and Tommy Andersson
This paper considers the sealed bid and ascending auction, which both identifies the minimum Walrasian equilibrium prices and where truthful preference revelation constitutes an equilibrium. Even though these auction formats share many theortical…
Yves Bourdet and Maria Persson
The current political turmoil in the Arab world has contributed to renewed interest in the Barcelona Process. This paper explores whether deeper integration in the form of trade facilitation – i.e. improved and simplified trade procedures – could be an…
Wolfgang Hess and Maria Persson
Aiming to explore how the survival of trade flows has evolved over time, we analyze a rich data set of detailed imports to individual EU15 countries from 140 non-EU exporters, covering the period 1962–2006. We find that short duration is a persistent…
Shon Ferguson and Sara Formai
The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine…
Shon Ferguson
Recent empirical evidence suggests that prices for some goods and services are higher in larger markets. This paper provides a demand-side explanation for this phenomenon when firms can choose how much to differentiate their products in a model of…
Mikael Elinder and Henrik Jordahl
There are several theoretical accounts of public sector outsourcing. We note that leading theories give different predictions of the influence of political variables and test the predictions on a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between…
Fredrik Heyman and Per Skedinger
Differential enforcement of employment protection by explicit design of the legislation, for example through exemptions for small firms, has been exploited in a growing body of research. However, little is known about the effects of differential…
Martin Olsson and Peter Skogman Thoursie
We use a Swedish sickness insurance reform to show that among married couples a partner’s benefit level affects spousal labour supply. The spousal elasticity of sick days with respect to the partner’s benefit is estimated to be 0.4, which is about…
Fredrik Andersson and Henrik Jordahl
We survey the literature on the effects of public sector outsourcing. Guided by theory, we systematically arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. Taken as a whole, the empirical literature indicates that…
Andreas Bergh
This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden’s economic and political development:
• How did Sweden become rich?
• What explains Sweden’s high level of income equality?
• What were the causes of Sweden’s problems from 1970 to…
Johan Lyhagen and Johanna Rickne
This paper develops an improved test of economic convergence or divergence using time series methods. The usefulness of the method is illustrated in an analysis of the growth pattern between Chinese regions in 1952–2007. Comparing all combinations of…
Verena Niepel
This paper studies how cognitive and social skills in childhood are related to the duration of unemployment in adolescence and early adulthood. I estimate a flexible proportional hazard rate model for the probability of making a transition from…
Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldenström
Realized capital gains are typically disregarded in the study of income inequality. We show that in the case of Sweden this severely underestimates the actual increase in inequality and, in particular, top income shares during recent decades. Using micro…
Per Skedinger
This paper examines the effects of collectively agreed increases in real minimum wages on employment transitions and hours among manual workers in the Swedish retail sector over the period 2001–05. The findings indicate that increases in real minimum…
Frédéric Delmar and Karl Wennberg
In this paper we outline an evolutionary framework of entrepreneurial processes where by firms are started, grow, and exit from the market. We explain the important of such a framework in explaining both what contextual factor affects entrepreneurial…
Pehr-Johan Norbäck, Lars Persson and Joacim Tåg
Why do so many high-priced acquisitions of entrepreneurial firms take place in network industries? We develop a theory of commercialization (entry or sale) in network industries showing that high equilibrium acquisition prices are driven by the…
Mikael Elinder, Oscar Erixson and Henry Ohlsson
The objective of this paper is to study when and how much labor supply and savings of heirs respond to inheritances. We estimate fixed effects models following direct heirs, inheriting in 2004, during the years 2000–2008 using Swedish panel data. Our…
Per Skedinger
This article surveys the literature and adds to the evidence on the impact of employment protection legislation on employment. While stringent employment protection contributes to less turnover and job reallocation, the effects on aggregate employment and…
Andreas Bergh and Nina Öhrn
In a recent paper, Colombier (2009) uses a robust estimation technique and claims to find empirical evidence that government size has not been detrimental to growth for OECD countries during the 1970 to 2001 period, and that endogenous growth theory is…
Harald Edquist
Since the mid 1990s labor productivity growth in Sweden has been high compared to Japan, the US and the western EU-countries. While productivity growth has been rapid in manufacturing, it has been much slower in the service sector. Paradoxically, all…
Andreas Bergh and Therese Nilsson
Using panel data from more than 100 countries around the world from 1988 through 2007, this paper examines the relationship between economic and social globalization and absolute income poverty ex post. We use the globalization index developed by Dreher…
Roger Svensson
One of the major reasons why inventors are awarded patents by governments is they encourage R&D investments and commercialization of inventions. If the patent holder commercializes his invention, he has stronger incentives to retain the patent. The…
Matz Dahlberg, Karin Edmark and Heléne Lundqvist
In recent decades immigration of workers and refugees to Europe has increased substantially, and the composition of the population in many countries has consequently become much more heterogeneous in terms of ethnic background. If people exhibit in-group…
Maria Bigoni, Sven-Olof Fridolfsson, Chloe Le Coq and Giancarlo Spagnolo
We present results from a laboratory experiment identifying the main channels through which different law enforcement strategies deter organized economic crime. The absolute level of a fine has a strong deterrence effect, even when the exogenous…
Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson
The literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings. This conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and the countries studied. An alternative approach – of…
Magnus Henrekson and Ulf Jakobsson
This paper explores the effects of deregulation and globalization on the dominant mode of corporate governance in Swedish public firms. The effects are multidimensional—the direction of change in corporate governance cannot be determined by simply…