News

The Economist blogg "Democracy in America" notes that when President Obama announced that Maria Contreras-Sweet would be his nominee to head the Small Business Administration (SBA) he extolled the virtues of small firms. They are “the lifeblood of our economy”, President Obama said. Observing that there are two kinds of small business owners The Economist refers to a study by the IFN-economists Magnus Henrekson and Tino Sanandaji.

The report Patentboxar som indirekt FOU-stöd (Patent boxes as indirect R & D support) is authored by Roger Svensson, IFN, and was presented by Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum at a seminar on February 6. The author shows that patent boxes are hardly a tax incentive that Sweden should introduce. It turns out that patent boxes do not necessarily create more R & D investment in the host country, and in addition this form of incentives allows for possibly increased international tax evasion.

“Small business activity does not measure entrepreneurship” is the title of an article by Magnus Henrekson and Tino Sanandaji, both IFN, published in the prestigious American scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The two researchers discuss Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, referring to growing and innovative firms: “In empirical research the rate of entrepreneurship is commonly estimated using the self-employment rate or other measures of small business activity. We argue that this empirical strategy gives rise to misleading inferences regarding Schumpeterian entrepreneurship.”
 

Research fellows at IFN regularly participate as speakers and discussants in events organized externally. During the current week IFN-researchers will participate in a number of such events, for example: Magnus Henrekson, who has co-authored a book about taxes for the 21st century, will take part in the presentation of the book. Assar Lindbeck will speak about deregulation of the housing market at a seminar organized by the Bokriskommittén, and Andreas Bergh, will travel to Brussels to discuss EU's migration policy.

The IT crash at the beginning of the 2000s "meant that the names entrepreneur and entrepreneurship lost its luster" writes Magnus Henrekson in the preface to the Swedish translation of Josh Lerner's book Boulevard of Broken Dreams : Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed - and What to Do About It . Henrekson argues that entrepreneurship is more and wider than today’s more popular term innovation. He warns against "misdirected" government assistance and believes that the Swedish Government’s VC firms Fouriertransform and Inlandsinnovation "in fact, are industrial and regional aid in disguise."
 

In a European perspective the Swedish economy is performing well. How come? Professor Magnus Henrekson, IFN, is interviewed by the Fjärde Uppgiften about what might make a country successful. One of the main reasons for the Swedish success, he claims, is that “we had our crisis in the 90's and implemented necessary reforms, which others have failed to carry through”.

When testing why immigrants are less likely than natives to be working in most OECD-countries, Andreas Bergh, IFN, finds two significant patterns. First, welfare state generosity keeps immigrants away from the labor force. Second, given that immigrants enter the labor force, collective bargaining agreements explain immigrant unemployment.

Alexander Ljungqvist , Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at New York University's Stern School of Business and affiliated to IFN , launched a breakfast seminar entitled The Decline and Fall of the Stock Market . Primarily he explained how the U.S. market works and explained that the number of IPOs have become fewer, yet larger . Alexander Ljungqvist's introduction was followed by comments by Börje Ekholm, CEO of Investor and Chairman of NASDAQ OMX and Magnus Billing, CEO of NASDAQ OMX in Stockholm.

An economy does not function in a vacuum but consists of people of flesh and blood, with moral values, with attitudes towards their fellow human beings and with an ability to be affected by laws, rules and norms. A new research program at IFN studies how such factors influence human behavior and, thereby, the way the economy functions – but also how the economy in turn influences morality, norms and social attitudes.

At a November 13 seminar, Henrik Jordahl of IFN presented a brand new research report, Välfärdstjänster i Privat Regi: Framväxt och Drivkrafter (Welfare Services under Private Management: Rise and Driving Forces). This seminar was part of an initiative between IFN and SNS:  From a Welfare State to a Welfare Society. The report, of which Jordahl is the editor, discusses the circumstances under which Swedish municipalities have privatized tax funded production of welfare services.

Magnus Henrekson, IFN, has in cooperation with Harald Edquist, Fores, written a chapter in a new book with the self-explanatory title What can we learn from economic reforms in Greece and Sweden?. The said chapter is about product market reforms and incentives to innovate in Sweden. The authors suggest a number of reforms to enhance economic developments in Sweden, including increased government support for venture capital in early-stage funding and increased R&D resources for SMEs.

For the first time the entire Swedish tax system has been mapped systematically from 1862 to the present day. "It's a vast project. For four years a number of scientists under the leadership of Dr. Mikael Stenkula, IFN, have studied the subject," explained Magnus Henrekson , director of the institute. The main results from the first segment – about labour income taxation – have recently been published in Scandinavian Economic History Review.

On Wednesday, as part of a joint IFN-SNS project called From welfare state to a welfare society, professor Anders Lindbom presented a chapter in a forthcoming report entitled "Welfare services under private management - the growth and motivation ." The anthology will be presented in its entirety on November 13. In his research Lindbom has found that different traditions of thought within the the Social Democratic Party form geographic clusters with the result that some (S)-municipalities are in favor of privatization and other are more or less against. A panel including former party leader Mona Sahlin (S) commented on the report.

Special Feature Articles have been published in IFN newsletters since 2006. Starting with Newsletter 2-2013 these research summaries will be translated into English. “To facilitate an eloquent policy discussion we highlight relevant empirical ties, based on substantiated theory” explained Professor Lars Persson, IFN, one of the authors of the first article translated into English: “Effects of Privatisation on Competition and Efficiency” by Fredrik Heyman, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson.

For a month Steven Kelman, Professor of Public Management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, has been guest researcher at IFN. On Wednesday, he and Anders Wijkman, former politician and analyst of procurement, spoke at a seminar organized by SNS (Centre for Business and Policy Studies). The question asked was how public procurement can be improved. Steven Kelman's advice to Sweden was to maximize the business perspective – what in Wijkman's procurement analysis is called doing "good deals". The U.S. has also introduced that officers responsible of procurement, from a certain level, must have training in business administration. A measure that he suggested that Sweden takes after.

Johanna Rickne, IFN, has been awarded the Intersentia FISS-prize for the best paper 2013 presented at the annual conference organized by the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS), this year in Sigtuna, Sweden. The title of the paper is "Firm Ownership and Social Insurance Inequality in Transitional China: Evidence from a Large Panel of Firm Data", which is co-authored with Qin Gao.
 

Faced with a large and eloquent audience Nobel Laureate in Economics (2006) Edmund Phelps gave a lecture on the good life, characterized as "flourishing". He explained that mass prosperity came with the mass innovation in the 19th century. Magnus Henrekson, IFN, and Solveig Wikström, Stockholm University, commented on this lecture and discussed, among other things, what creates this good life. Vladimir Kvint, La Salle and Moscow University, addressed the issue of quality in various aspects, and how it is essential for social development – and ultimately whether a society can endure. Torbjörn Becker from Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics commented on this lecture.

Morten Søberg, resigning State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance on Monday gave a lecture at IFN on "the new Norwegian banking regulations as a tool for financial stability" . Moreover, Ola Borten Moe, the resigning Minister for Oil & Energy, also attended the seminar. Søberg explained that in regards to financial stability there is only one issue separating the outgoing and incoming governments - judging by election promises – namely, how much capital that home buyers need to deposit. So far 15 percent has to be paid up-front , while the incoming government wants to reduce this to the Swedish level, that is 10 percent.

Thursday September 26, IFN organized a seminar with Professor David Rose, University of Missouri-St Louis, who presented his book Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior. Inga-Britt Ahlenius, former Director General of the Swedish National Audit Office and Niclas Berggren, Associate Professor, IFN, commented. Faced with an eloquent audience David Rose explained his thoughts on why opportunism thrive in large groups and how we can embrace a morality that makes it feel wrong to execute a certain action, even if a person does not come to harm - albeit a larger group.