| 11. |
- Carlén, Björn, 1965-
(författare)
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Studies in climate change policy : theory and experiments
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Emission Quota Trade Among the Few: Laboratory Evidence of Joint Implementation Among Committed Countries. The purpose of the laboratory tests reported here is to identify a well-functioning design, tailored for an upcoming unique experiment using real-world relevant decision makers for carbon emission reductions trade among four countries committed to binding carbon emission limits, a form of so-called joint implementation. The design is required to promote high trade efficiency and a limited scope for arbitrage. All designs tested reached high levels of efficiency (87-99 %), which is noteworthy given the small number of traders. Attempts to adjust the design to reduce or eliminate arbitrage were successful in the final test rounds.The Role of Market Power in International Emissions Trading: A Laboratory Experiment. Several policy advisers have expressed concerns that market power will characterize international greenhouse gas emissions trading, especially since presumed large buyers or sellers, e.g., the US or Russia or, eventually, China, would be allowed to trade directly on the market. The experiment reported here mimics a case where twelve countries, one of which is a large buyer, trade carbon emissions on a double auction market and where traders have essentially full information about the underlying net demand. The findings deviate from those of the standard version of market power effects in that trade volumes are efficient and prices are for the most part competitive.Cost-effective Approaches to Attracting Low-Income Countries to International Emissions Trading: Theory and Experiments. The cost-effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol and any similar non-global climate treaty would be enhanced by attracting as many new countries as possible to international emissions trading and achieving these additions as soon as possible. This paper focuses on two forms of compensation that can be used to attract poor, risk-averse countries to participate in emissions trading. The theoretical as well as experimental evidence presented here suggests that, if poor countries are more risk averse than rich countries, partial compensation in terms of financial transfers is more cost-effective than relying solely on giving the poor countries large emission quotas as has been the case so far. In fact, the theoretical argument for cost-effectiveness indicates that significant parts of the emission quotas to new participating countries should be replaced by financial transfers. Using money for partial compensation would also reduce the risk for 'hot air' allocations and the ensuing political obstacles to cost-effectiveness that such allocations tend to create.On the Interaction Effects of Environmental Policies. Recent literature has shown that environmental policies interact with the tax system in a way that may substantially increase the social cost of environmental control, the so-called interaction effect. So far, this literature has focused on specific types of environmental problems and an interaction effect that arises on the labor market. Allowing for more than one primary factor and other types of environmental problems, other interaction effect may arise. Some of these may reduce the social cost of environmental control. This is so, for example, if inputs that harm the environment when used in one activity are harmless in others, as is the case for some location-specific externalities. In fact, the aggregate interaction effect may well be cost reducing. In addition, it is even possible that the interaction effect on the labor market is cost reducing.
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| 12. |
- Cheung, Maria, 1975-
(författare)
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Education, Gender and Media : Empirical Essays in Development Economics
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The first essay, Edutainment Radio, Women’s Status and Primary School Participation: Evidence from Cambodia, investigates whether exposure to education-entertainment radio leads to improved women's status and primary school participation. Results show significant behavioral effects related to women's decision-making power and investments in children's primary schooling in exposed areas. Suggestive evidence indicates that gender-related attitudes were affected as well, which is a stepping stone towards changing socially constructed gender norms. The second essay, Who Benefits from Free Education? Long-Term Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Cambodia, investigates the effects of abolishing primary school fees. One additional year of free education had no impact on poor children, but increased the educational attainment for non-poor children. Persistent local educational norms and income segregation may explain why poor students were less likely to progress and complete the higher grades. The third essay, Does Female Education Postpone Fertility? Evidence from a Policy Experiment in Cambodia, investigates the role of female education as a vehicle to postpone early childbearing. Exploiting a policy experiment with differential impact on education, the findings suggest that women who gained more education were associated with fewer births and a postponement of early fertility while no changes in early fertility were observed for unaffected women. The fourth essay, The Impact of a Food for Education Program on Schooling in Cambodia, evaluates three types of FFE interventions gradually implemented in primary schools. Results show that enrollment increased sharply in the short-run but did not lead to higher educational achievements, plausible due to a countervailing class size effect. While these interventions are cost-effective to attract children to school, adjusting school resources accordingly may be important to promote a long-term learning as well.
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| 13. |
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| 14. |
- Ekström, Mathias, 1982-
(författare)
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Cues, Conformity, and Choice Architecture : Empirical Essays on Influence
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three papers summarized as follows. “Can Indifference Make the World Greener?” We test whether the default option can nudge people to save resources in a simple, non-dynamic, decision task with only two alternatives, and where people have been explicitly informed about the recommended course of action. In a natural field experiment we switch printers’ default option, from one-sided to two-sided printing, at a random point in time. The results confirm that roughly one third of all printing is determined by the default alternative, and a green default therefore saves resources on average about 15 percent. “Is Liking Contagious?” In this paper we set up a natural field experiment on the social networking service Facebook to study whether people are more prone to Like a status update if someone else has done so before. We distinguish between three treatments: (i) one unknown person Likes the update, (ii) three unknown persons Like the update and (iii) the most connected person Likes the update. Whereas the first condition had no effect, the latter two more than doubled the probability to press the Like button, implying that both the number of predecessors and social proximity matters. Neither limited attention, nor observational learning, is consistent with the results. Conformity is therefore the most plausible mechanism behind our finding. “Do Watching Eyes Affect Charitable Giving? Evidence from a Field Experiment” The presence of implicit observation cues, such as picture of eyes, has been shown to increase generosity in dictator games, and cooperative behavior in field settings. In this paper I test if a picture of watching eyes affects unconditional giving in a natural environment, where the recipient is a charity organization. This setting avoids: (i) experimenter demand effects, (ii) that the facial cue reminds subjects of a human counterpart, and (iii) a social multiplier effect. I find no general effect, but during days when relatively few other people visited a store the picture of eyes increased donated amount by 30 percent. This result indicates that subtle social cues can invoke reputation concerns in humans.
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| 15. |
- Engström, Gustav, 1977-
(författare)
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Essays on Economic Modeling of Climate Change
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Structural change in a two-sector model of the climate and the economy introduces issues concerning substitutability among goods in a two-sector economic growth model where emissions from fossil fuels give rise to a climate externality. Substitution is modeled using a CES-production function where the intermediate inputs differ only in their technologies and the way they are affected by the climate externality. I derive a simple formula for optimal taxes and resource allocation over time and highlight model sensitivity w.r.t the elasticity of substitution and distribution parameters.Energy Balance Climate Models and General Equilibrium Optimal Mitigation Policies develops a one-dimensional energy balance climate model with heat diffusion and anthropogenic forcing across latitudes driven by global fossil fuel use coupled to an economic growth model. Our results suggest that if the implementation of international transfers across latitudes are not possible or costly, then optimal taxes are in general spatially non-uniform and may be lower at poorer latitudes. Energy Balance Climate Models, Damage Reservoirs and the Time Profileof Climate Change Policy explores optimal mitigation policies through the lens of a latitude dependent energy balance climate model coupled to an economic growth model. We associate the movement of an endogenous polar ice cap with the idea of a damage reservoir being a finite source of climate related damages affecting the economy. The analysis shows that the introduction of damage reservoirs can generate multiple steady states and Skiba points.Assessing Sustainable Development in a DICE World investigates a method for assessing sustainable development under climate change in the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE-2007 model). The analysis shows that the sustainability measure is highly sensitive to the calibration of the inter-temporal elasticity parameter and discount rate of the social welfare function.
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| 16. |
- Fausch, Jürg, 1982-
(författare)
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Essays on Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Asset pricing implications of a DSGE model with recursive preferences and nominal rigidities. I study jointly macroeconomic dynamics and asset prices implied by a production economy featuring nominal price rigidities and Epstein-Zin (1989) preferences. Using a reasonable calibration, the macroeconomic DSGE model is consistent with a number of stylized facts observed in financial markets like the equity premium, a negative real term spread, a positive nominal term spread and the predictability of stock returns, without compromising the model's ability to fit key macroeconomic variables. The interest rate smoothing in the monetary policy rule helps generate a low risk-free rate volatility which has been difficult to achieve for standard real business cycle models where monetary policy is neutral. In an application, I show that the model provides a framework for analyzing monetary policy interventions and the associated effects on asset prices and the real economy.Macroeconomic news and the stock market: Evidence from the eurozone. This paper is an empirical study of excess return behavior in the stock market in the euro area around days when important macroeconomic news about inflation, unemployment or interest rates are scheduled for announcement. I identify state dependence such that equity risk premia on announcement days are significantly higher when the interests rates are in the vicinity of the zero lower bound. Moreover, I provide evidence that for the whole sample period, the average excess returns in the eurozone are only higher on days when FOMC announcements are scheduled for release. However, this result vanishes in a low interest rate regime. Finally, I document that the European stock market does not command a premium for scheduled announcements by the European Central Bank (ECB).The impact of ECB monetary policy surprises on the German stock market. We examine the impact of ECB monetary policy surprises on German excess stock returns and the possible reasons for such a response. First, we conduct an event study to asses the impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy on stock returns. Second, within the VAR framework of Campbell and Ammer (1993), we decompose excess stock returns into news regarding expected excess returns, future dividends and future real interest rates. We measure conventional monetary policy shocks using futures markets data. Our main findings are that the overall variation in German excess stock returns mainly reflects revisions in expectations about dividends and that the stock market response to monetary policy shocks is dependent on the prevailing interest rate regime. In periods of negative real interest rates, a surprise monetary tightening leads to a decrease in excess stock returns. The channels behind this response are news about higher expected excess returns and lower future dividends.
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| 17. |
- Forsfält, Tomas, 1964-
(författare)
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Timing options and taxation : essays on the economics of firm creation and tax evasion
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Taxation of Small Firms under Uncertainty: A Real Option View of Firm CreationThis paper addresses the impact of the tax system on the incentives to become self-employed. The new approach here is that the creation of a firm is assumed to be an opportunity but not an obligation, that is, a real option. A comprehensive income tax system and a “dual” tax system of the Nordic type are compared. The comprehensive system yields a higher threshold with respect to creating a firm than the dual system.Swedish data on disposable income for different socio-economic groups are used to evaluate the relevance of the critical assumptions in the model and to find parameter estimates. A result is that the assumptions are consistent with data for white-collar labor but not for blue-collar labor.The Effects of Risk Aversion and Age on Investments in New FirmsHow does the age of risk-averse individuals affect investments in private projects? This question is analyzed under the assumption that such individuals have to invest a large fraction of their personal wealth in order to establish a new firm. Thresholds conditional on age that trigger a switch from one asset to another are derived in a continuous-time portfolio choice model with zero-or-one choices. As the investor gets older - and depending on random events - not only wealth, but also the thresholds, might increase. Thus, there are two counteracting effects on the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur.Tax Evasion: A Real Option ApproachA theoretical model of excise tax evasion is developed in this paper. The dynamics of a change in tax policy is derived, under the assumption that consumers benefit from a lower price when entering a “black market”. However, entry also imposes a sunk cost, which gives rise to asymmetric effects and persistence effects on both aggregate demand and on tax revenues. An increase in the tax rate instantaneously brings more entrants into the black market, whereas a tax cut has no short-run effects on the fraction of the population that has access to the black market.
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| 18. |
- Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof, 1968-
(författare)
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Essays on endogenous merger theory
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of a collection of essays on endogenous merger theory.Why Mergers Reduce Profits, and Raise Share Prices - A Theory of Preemptive Mergers. The empirical puzzle why mergers reduce profits, and raise share prices is explained in this essay. If being an "insider" is better than being an "outsider," firms may merge to preempt their partner merging with a rival. The stock-value of the insiders is increased, since the risk of becoming an outsider is eliminated. These results are derived in an endogenous merger model.Why Event Studies Do Not Detect Anti-Competitive Mergers. Anti-competitive mergers increase competitors' profits, since they reduce competition. Using a model of endogenous mergers, it is shown that such mergers nevertheless may reduce the competitors' share-prices. Thus, event-studies can not detect anti-competitive mergers.Should Mergers be Controlled? Anti-competitive mergers benefit competitors more than the merging firms. Such externalities are shown to reduce firms' incentives to merge (a holdup mechanism). Firms delay merger proposals, thereby foregoing valuable profits and hoping other firms will merge instead - a war of attrition. The final result, however, is an overly concentrated market. This essay also demonstrates a surprising intertemporal link: merger incentives may be reduced by the prospect of additional profitable mergers in the future. Merger control may help protect competition. Holdup and intertemporal links make policy design more difficult, however. Even reasonable policies may be worse than not controlling mergers at all.Anti-Competitive versus Pro-Competitive Mergers. In a framework where mergers are mutually excluding, firms are shown to pursue anti-competitive rather than (alternative) pro-competitive mergers. Potential outsiders to anti-competitive mergers refrain from pursuing pro-competitive mergers if the positive externalities from anti-competitive mergers are strong enough. Potential outsiders to pro-competitive mergers pursue anti-competitive mergers if the negative externalities from the pro-competitive mergers are strong enough. Potential participants in anti-competitive mergers are cheap targets due to the risk of becoming outsiders to pro-competitive mergers. Firms may even pursue an unprofitable and anti-competitive merger, when alternative mergers are profitable and pro-competitive.A Consumers' Surplus Defense in Merger Control. A government wanting to promote an efficient allocation of resources as measured by the total surplus, should strategically delegate to its competition authority a welfare standard with a bias in favour of consumers. A consumer bias means that some welfare increasing mergers will be blocked. This is optimal, if the relevant alternative to the merger is another change in market structure that will even further increase the total surplus. Furthermore, a consumer bias is shown to be optimal even though it increases the likelihood of forbidding mergers that maximize the total surplus
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| 19. |
- Fukushima, Nanna, 1978-
(författare)
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Essays on the Economics of the 1956 Clean Air Act
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three essays in environmental and health economics.The UK Clean Air Act, Black Smoke, and Infant MortalityThis paper estimates the effects of the 1956 UK Clean Air Act on infant mortality. Using novel data, I exploit the seasonality in demand for coal to analyze the effects of a staggered expansion of a ban on local smoke emission. The findings show that the policy eliminated the seasonal difference in air quality as well as infant mortality. According to my instrumental variables estimates, the reduction in air pollution between 1957 and 1973 can account for 70 % of the observed decline in infant mortality during the same period. The results are relevant to explain the fast decline in post-war infant mortality in developed countries and understand the effect of pollution on infant mortality in many developing countries.A Fine Solution to Air Pollution?This paper studies the effect of an exogenous change in air pollution regulation enforcement on regulation compliance. I exploit the spatial and temporal variation in the roll-out of zonal bans on smoke from coal in densely populated areas in England between 1963 – 1973 to study the effect of regulation on air pollution when the monetary punishment if convicted is doubled. I find that the increase in fine size increased the effect of the regulation on air pollution by 37 percent. However, evidence suggests that the poorest households disproportionally carried the cost of the marginal improvement in air quality from an increase in fine. The findings highlight the distributional concerns associated when designing an effective environmental regulation.Environmental Regulation and Firm PerformanceThis paper investigates the effect of environmental regulation in England in the 1960 – 70s on changes in employment and the entry and exit of manufacturing plants. It matches 1 km2 grid resolution plant data for multiple years with novel data on the location and timing of a roll-out of a ban on bituminous coal, the leading source of energy and heating in industry at the time. I show that the regulation negatively affected employment in low-productive plants but increased the probability of survival, employment, and the entry of high-productive plants. I present a simple theoretical model with heterogeneous firms and find empirical evidence in line with model predictions.
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| 20. |
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