| 41. |
- Nordfors, Nicklas, 1991-
(författare)
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Essays on Development and the Environment
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Droughts and city growth Some researchers and policymakers posit that climate change should increase city growth and urbanization as rising temperatures make rural livelihoods precarious, while others argue that climate change might trap rural households who cannot afford to migrate because of increasing poverty. Existing empirical evidence on the link between climate and urbanization is inconclusive. This chapter exploits novel data mapping city footprint growth for 7,000 cities in 108 low- to middle-income countries across 23 years to provide new evidence on the relationship between drought and urbanization. Cities experience large and persistent declines in built-up area growth rates after major drought events in cities' hinterlands: after 11 years, cities are 0.7 percent smaller compared to a drought-free counterfactual. I show that fully accounting for dynamic effects is essential to correctly understand the relationship between drought and city growth. Consistent with models that envision a drought-migration poverty trap, the negative effects on urbanization are more pronounced for the poorest, and most agricultural countries.Rapid population growth and city shape Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are growing rapidly. The urban population has grown ten-fold in the last 50 years, and is projected to keep increasing. What are the consequences of this rapid population growth for city form? In Africa, urban planning has often failed or lagged behind, leaving cities with inadequate infrastructure. Policymakers and researchers have suggested that the rapidity of the rise in urban population is partly to blame, but quantitative and systematic evidence remains scant. I utilize new high resolution data to examine the relationship between population growth and city form. I find that areas in cities which are built up during periods of faster population growth tend to be less densely built, have lower building heights, and are more likely to be exposed to flooding. In addition, these areas have smaller buildings, and are more informal. Together, my findings suggest that urban population growth helps shape the built environment in Sub-Saharan African cities, inducing lower built-up density and more informality.Trade and pollution: Evidence from India What happens to pollution when developing countries open their borders to trade? Trade might increase production and thus pollution (the scale effect); shift production towards more or less clean industries (the composition effect); or bring with it new technologies or income growth that increases demand for cleaner production (the technique effect). Empirical evidence on the environmental effects of openness to trade in developing countries remains limited. We study the effects of the 1991 trade liberalization reform on water pollution in rivers in India. At the median reduction in district-level tariff exposure, water pollution subsequently rose by 0.12 standard deviations.
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| 42. |
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| 43. |
- Odendahl, Christian, 1980-
(författare)
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Parties, Majorities, Incumbencies : Four essays in political economics
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays on political economics. The first paper studies the impact of having one party in government versus a coalition of parties, where the exogenous variation in the type of government stems from close election outcomes. It uses a new algorithm to detect these close elections in multi-party systems to answer this question. Based on data from more than 2,000 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria, it finds that single-party governments spend more, not less as is often concluded in the theoretical and empirical literature. The second paper uses the same method of detecting close elections to extract exogenous variation, but looks at the political power of parties and its effect on tax policies. It finds significant effects of party power that are mostly in line with expectations. The third paper looks at the transition of voters between parties in three consecutive elections for the state parliament in Bavaria, and infers parties’ ideological positions from these transition flows. After estimating the transition matrices with a method based on maximum entropy, it uses these matrices to compute a distance matrix and uses multi-dimensional scaling to place parties in a policy space. The resulting positions of parties are plausible, consistent across both transition periods, and comparable to those estimated with other methods. The final paper studies the heterogeneity in the advantage of incumbent district candidates in German federal and state parliament elections. In particular, it looks at the party in government, and how that affects the incumbency advantage of district candidates. It finds that an incumbency effect only exists (for both major parties) if the center-left SPD is in government, a heterogeneity that is robust across different specifications and jurisdictions.
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| 44. |
- Olme, Elisabet, 1986-
(författare)
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Essays on Educational Choices and Integration
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Are Parents Uninformed? The Impact of School Performance Information on School Choices and School Assignments. We study the impact of providing information about schools' performances on households' choice of school. A randomly selected subset of households with children about to start middle school in a Swedish municipality were provided with information about the schools’ performances on standardized tests. We find that this information made them more likely to apply to the top-performing schools, compared to households in the control group. The effect is driven by native children and children to high-skilled parents. Next, we simulate how this would affect the allocation of students to schools, under the assumption that all households would have access to this information. As expected, enrollment in top-performing schools increase, but the effect is muted by the schools' capacity constraints. Again, native and high-skilled drive the effect, by shifting their applications from mid- to top-performing schools. This leads to reduced school segregation by foreign background as children with a foreign background are overrepresented at the top-performing schools to begin with. Furthermore, school segregation by parental education increases slightly as children with highly educated parents congregate at the top-performing schools.
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| 45. |
- Olofsson, Jon, 1986-
(författare)
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An Economic Backbone of Development : Essays in Financial and Political Economy
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis consists of three self-contained essays.Local Banking and Historical Innovation: the Effect of Swedish Savings BanksHow does access to credit affect innovation at the early stages of development? This essay uses digitized records from the Swedish savings banks movement, in combination with novel data on the universe of historical patenting, to study how savings banks affected innovation in Sweden between 1900 and 1949, a period when the country was still a developing economy. The empirical strategy exploits local variation in the openings and closings of the savings banks. Municipalities with bank presence experienced increased innovation, measured by more patents from innovators seated in the municipality. In particular, the head offices of the banks impacted innovation, as they were the executive unit and administered lending. Patents from industries more dependent on financing from external sources are driving the effect, along with places with a relatively high population, a developed industry, and a previous history of innovation. The results emphasize the importance of financial institutions with strong local ties and the ability to encourage and redirect savings to promote innovation in developing economies.The Effects of Local Banking: Historical Evidence from the Swedish Savings Bank MovementWhat is the long-term effect of local banking on industrial growth and economic progress in a developing economy? We shed light on this question using rich data covering the staggered rollout of the Swedish savings bank movement and information on industrial development, population statistics, and mortality in 2400 Swedish municipalities during the first half of the 20th century. The first part of the empirical analysis shows that the presence of a savings bank substantially affected industry structure and industry growth by increasing the number of firms, the degree of mechanization, and industry sales value. More advanced industries, reliant on external financing, experienced the most substantial impact. The second part shows that the savings banks also impacted general economic development, captured by population growth and reduced infant and child mortality. The study provides novel insights into the merits of local banking systems in the early stages of economic development.Lethal Police Violence and the Public Perception of the Police: Evidence from US CountiesThe public perception of the police is significant for the validity of the democratic system. Compared to white citizens, Afro-Americans have low confidence in the police. They are also more likely to fall victim to police violence with lethal outcomes. Therefore, ethnicity and group identity may influence how the public views police violence and, by extension, how police violence affects public perceptions. This essay explores this relationship using the timing of an individual-level survey and the occurrence of local police killings. Survey participants interviewed after a police killing of a black victim obtained worse attitudes toward the police. Mainly black participants and those who are young and have a high income or education level induce the effect. In contrast, events with non-black victims elevate the status of the police among non-black respondents and those with a lower level of education. The results are consistent with group identity theory and provide insight into how controversial events affect confidence in a political institution.
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| 46. |
- Olsson, Martin, 1978-
(författare)
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Essays on Employment Protection, Private Equity and Spousal Behavior
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four papers, summarized as follows. “Employment Protection and Sickness Absence” An exemption in the Swedish Employment Security Act in 2001 allows employers with at most ten employees to exempt two workers from the seniority rule at times of redundancies. The exemption is found to decrease sickness absence by more than 13% at those establishments that were treated relative to those that were not and this was due to a behavioral, rather than a compositional, effect. “Employment Protection and Parental Childcare” I examine if employment protection affects parental childcare. I estimate that an increased dismissal risk reduces the total days of parental childcare by around six percent. The identification relies on a reform that made it easier for employers in Sweden to dismiss workers in small firms. Both a sorting effect and a behavioral effect can explain the reduced childcare. I also find that temporary parental leave is redistributed within households if only one partner was affected by the reform. “Private Equity and Employees” Using linked employer-employee data from Sweden, a difference-in-difference approach, and 201 private equity buyouts undertaken between 1998 and 2004, we show that unemployment risk declines and labor income increases for employees after a private equity buyout. A plausible explanation is relaxed financial constraints: the effects are strongest in industries dependent on external finance for growth, for non-divisional buyouts, and for buyouts just prior to 2001. “Temporary Disability Insurance and Spousal Labor Supply” We use a reform in the Swedish temporary disability insurance to show that the partner’s benefit level affects spousal labour supply: an eleven percent increase of the partner’s benefit level is estimated to prolong spousal sick spells with around eight percent, which corresponds to an elasticity of sick days with respect to the partner’s benefit of three-quarters of the own labor supply elasticity of unity.
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| 47. |
- Oxenstierna, Gabriel C, 1955-
(författare)
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Market power in the Swedish banking oligopoly : a game-theoretic model of competition applied to the five big Swedish banks 1989-97
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims at assessing the degree of competition among the five dominating Swedish banks during the period 1989-1997. In so doing, it also aims to develop a general oligopoly model with the specific purpose of providing a tool for an improved methodology for the evaluation of market power in oligopolistic markets, and to demonstrate the empirical application of this methodology.In the first of the three essays, An Asymmetric Oligopoly Model and a Method for Its Empirical Application, a general oligopoly model is developed that is suitable for empirical research where the data set contains firm-level data on prices, quantities and costs. This model makes it possible to gauge empirically observed prices to a range of game-theoretic equilibrium prices that are analytically deducted. It also allows for precise calculations of welfare effects from non-competitive pricing.In the second essay, Do Swedish Banks Enjoy Economies of Scale or Economies of Scope?, the extent of production economies on the cost side in the five big Swedish banks are investigated. This essay complements the empirical study of Swedish banking by, inter alia, estimating a cost function that includes not only operating costs, but also opportunity costs of equity capital. Results imply small dis-economies of scope between deposits and loans for the banks, as well as slightly negative economies of scale.In the third essay, Testing for Market Power in the Swedish Banking Oligopoly, the model in the first essay is developed into a banking context, allowing for the inherent multi-product characteristic in that industry. In the empirical part, results show that there was significant market power in both the loan market and the deposit market, although with a strongly time-varying pattern. The overall picture of conduct, is that pricing policies were less competitive in the deposit market. The economic cost level consitutes a bottom level for pricing in the loan market and attempts to establish higher spreads are not sustainable in the long run. Finally, welfare losses to the society from non-competitive pricing of loans and deposits are calculated to be ca 1.1% of GDP as a yearly average during the sampling period. The combined results of the empirical analyses in the second and third essays, indicate that there are no cost-side arguments for the many mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in the industry proper, and that small, specialised banking institutions might be competitively viable.
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| 48. |
- Pateli, Evangelia, 1983-
(författare)
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Essays on International Trade : Theory and Evidence on the Determinants and Implications of Firms' Import Behaviour
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aspires to further contribute to our understanding of both the determinants as well as the implications of intermediate goods trade. Faced with intensifying global competition, firms are increasingly developing their production process and their sourcing strategies beyond national borders in order to take advantage of lower costs, superior quality and technological advances.In the first two chapters, I analyse firm-level import decisions in an environment allowing for unintentional exchanges of import-relevant information between firms. I build on the idea that any import-specific knowledge acquired by established importers, in a given region/industry, spills over to prospective importers lowering the costs associated with entry in international markets for intermediates. Chapter 1, using firm-level import data on the universe of Swedish firms, at the product level and by source market for the period 1998-2011, provides evidence for the existence of import spillovers and offers insights into the mechanisms through which they operate. Chapter 2, sets out a theoretical framework formalising import spillovers and their implications for the firm’s import behaviour and for consumer welfare.In the third and last chapter of this thesis, I turn to intermediate import dependence with an aim to explain the lack of sensitivity of trade flows to exchange rate movements. I propose a tractable framework and study how real devaluations affect firm-level export decisions and export performance, as well as aggregate exports and welfare in an environment where final goods production uses both domestic and imported intermediates.
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| 49. |
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| 50. |
- Pronin, Mathias, 1985-
(författare)
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Essays in Macroeconomics and Political Economy
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Response of the Riksbank to House Prices in SwedenIn the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, an environment of historically low interest rates and extensive household indebtedness in the OECD countries have triggered a vivid debate on whether central banks should react to house-price fluctuations in their pursuit of monetary policy. In Sweden, a period of low policy rates and house-price inflation was halted when the central bank increased the interest rates in 2010. This study investigates whether the Riksbank reacted to house prices in the period from 1993 to 2013. Using Bayesian methods and quarterly data, I estimate a DSGE model with patient and impatient households, where the central bank reacts to house-price inflation. The results suggest that the Riksbank did respond to house prices during the sample period. The findings are robust and plausible from an economic perspective. Wealth Distribution under Heterogeneous PreferencesThe standard macroeconomic framework of uninsurable idiosyncratic income risk fails to generate key features of the aggregate wealth distribution. Although the assumptions of heterogeneity of either impatience rate or risk aversion are common in the literature, they do not reflect the evidence and common belief that both parameters are dispersed across the population. I extend the standard framework by allowing for heterogeneity in both impatience and risk aversion. The results suggest that this richer framework outperforms previous work in terms of matching actual properties of the wealth distribution. In particular, the model presented generates a greater concentration of wealth at the top of the distribution and a greater mass of poor households than models with preference heterogeneity in only one dimension. Political Budget Cycles and Dependence on Foreign Aid This study poses the question of whether countries with a higher share of foreign aid per GDP exhibit larger political budget cycles. Using data on a large sample of countries, I find a significant negative effect of aid dependency on the budget surplus in election years. The effect is quantitatively important and implies that on average, a 1% increase in foreign aid per GDP is associated with a 0.2 percentage point larger deficit in election years. The results are robust to the model specification, inclusion of control variables, and other political budget cycles' determining factors described in the recent literature.
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