Jonas Vlachos and Daniel Waldenström
The growth effects of international financial liberalization and integration are investigated using the methodology and data developed by Rajan and Zingales (1998). The main result is that industries highly dependent on external financing do not…
Assar Lindbeck, Sten Nyberg and Jörgen W. Weibull
The paper analyses the interaction between economic incentives and work norms in the context of social insurance. If the work norm is endogenous in the sense that it is weaker when the population share of beneficiaries is higher, then voters will choose…
Per Skedinger
This paper considers the effects of union-bargained minimum wages on transitions into and out of employment in the hotels and catering industry over the period 1979–99. This industry is characterised by a high fraction of unskilled labour input, high…
Roger Svensson
In this paper, I analyze the commercialization of patents in the Swedish medicine & hygiene sector. A unique database makes it possible to use a new method, where I follow the commercialization process of individual patents. A surprisingly low share…
Kaushik Basu and Jorgen W. Weibull
A people's culture, norms and habits are important determinants not just of the quality of social life but of economic progress and growth. In this paper we take the view that while the importance of culture is undeniable, the innateness of culture is…
Assar Lindbeck
Developing countries, in particular the least developed ones, probably have more to learn from social policies in Europe during the early 20th century than from the elaborate welfare-state arrangements after World War II. In addition to macroeconomic…
Assar Lindbeck and Mats Persson
We characterize pension systems along three dimensions: 1) actuarial vs. non-actuarial, 2) funded vs. pay-as-you-go, 3) defined-contribution vs. defined-benefit. Increasing the degree of actuarial fairness, by strengthening the linkage between…
Henrik Braconier, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Dieter Urban
This study explores how relative skilled-wage premia affect FDI. Contrary to previous studies based on factor endowment differences, we find strong support for vertical FDI, in the sense that more FDI is conducted in countries where unskilled labor is…
F. Mikael Sandström and Fredrik Bergström
An important issue in the debate on voucher systems and school choice is what effects competition from independent schools will have on public schools. Sweden has made a radical reform of its system for financing schools. Independent and public schools…
Nicolas Vieille and Jörgen W. Weibull
Dynamic decision-making without commitment is usually modelled as a game between the current and future selves of the decision maker. It has been observed that if the time-horizon is infinite, then such games may have multiple subgame-perfect equilibrium…
Niclas Andrén and Lars Oxelheim
Real exchange and interest rates may still fluctuate inside the EMU and give rise to changes in competitiveness. We find, in contrast to what is generally expected, no convergence in these variables after the introduction of the euro. On the contrary, a…
María Sáez-Martí and Jörgen W. Weibull
Is discounting of future instantaneous utilities consistent with altruism towards future selves? More precisely, can temporal preferences, expressed as a sum of discounted instantaneous utilities, be derived from a representation in the form of a sum of…
Lars Oxelheim and Clas Wihlborg
Value Based Management (VBM) has become a common tool for ex ante and ex post evaluation of corporate strategies and projects from the perspective of shareholder value maximization (SVM). VBM-frameworks are designed to support investment and divestment…
Thomas P. Tangerås
This paper analyses simultaneous regulation of cost and quality when firms have private, correlated information about productivity and the regulator receives a signal about quality. It is shown that managerial effort and expenditures on quality are…
María Sáez-Martí and Jörgen W. Weibull
We investigate whether temporal preferences expressed as a sum of discounted consumption utilities can be derived from a welfare representation in the form of a sum of discounted total utilities. We find that a consumption-based representation in the…
Lars Oxelheim
Increased integration and growing macroeconomic fluctuations require more attention to be paid to the link between the ”noise” that these fluctuations represent and the company’s own development. For many reasons management must wee d out the…
Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
We investigate the interaction between cross-border acquisitions and greenfield entry in a multi-firm setting. It is shown that the net profits of the acquirer may decrease when the acquisition gives the acquirer a strong position in the product market,…