| 11. |
- Lindbeck, Assar, et al.
(author)
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A Continuous Theory of Income Insurance
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this paper we treat an individual’s health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a minor technical matter; in fact, a continuous treatment of an individual’s health sheds new light on the role and functioning of income insurance and makes it possible to capture a number of real-world phenomena that are not easily captured in binary models. In particular, moral hazard is not regarded as outright fraud, but as a gradual adjustment of the willingness to go to work when income insurance is available. Further, the model can easily encompass phenomena such as administrative rejection of claims and the role of social norms. It also gives a rich view of the desirability of insurance in the first place.
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Ferguson, Shon, 1979-
(author)
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Essays on Trade, Technology and the Organization of Firms
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- "Endogenous Sunk Costs, Exporting and Heterogeneous Firms" Empirical evidence shows that R&D spending is highly correlated with firm productivity and highly concentrated among large firms. This paper develops a model of quality competition with heterogeneous firms that can explain these patterns. The model makes two new predictions. The first prediction is that exporters upgrade while domestic firms downgrade when trade liberalizes. The second prediction is that quality competition reduces the effect of trade liberalization along the extensive margin. "Endogenous Product Differentiation, Market Size and Trade" Recent empirical evidence suggests that average export prices are higher when firms sell in large markets. This paper offers a theoretical explanation for why we do not always see pro-competitive market size effects in the trade data for differentiated goods. The model here proposes that export prices can in fact be higher in larger countries because firms have greater incentive to differentiate their products, which increases price-cost markups. In the two-country case the model predicts that larger countries sell manufacturing goods at higher price-cost markups than smaller countries. "Institution-Driven Comparative Advantage, Complex Goods and Organizational Choice" 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 international trade patterns. We find that vertical integration lessens the impact of a country's ability to enforce contracts on the comparative advantage of complex goods. We also find that countries with good financial institutions export disproportionately more in sectors that produce complex goods and that have a high propensity for vertical integration.
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| 14. |
- Hirvonen, Lalaina, 1974-
(author)
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Essays in Empirical Labour Economics : Family Background, Gender and Earnings
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- All three essays in this thesis are concerned with the interrelation of family, gender and labour market outcomes. The first paper investigates family earnings mobility between parents and sons, and parents and daughters, highlighting the role of assortative mating. The results suggest that daughters are more mobile than sons. I also find that Sweden has a higher degree of mobility compared to the U.S., and that assortative mating is an important underlying channel for earnings transmission. The difference in mobility between the two countries does not inherently depend on factors affecting the marriage match. Moreover, adult economic outcomes are more dependent on family background for those at the lower end of the earnings distribution. The second study analyses the long-run effects of an increase in family size on the 1980-2005 labour market outcomes of Swedish men and women. The decision to have (more) children is dependent on current and future labour market prospects. I use the exogenous variations in the sex composition of the first two children to overcome this endogeneity problem. My findings suggest that having an additional child has a stronger negative impact on earnings than on participation. However, mothers experience a substantial but not complete long-term recovery in earnings. The third paper illustrates the difficulty in disentangling the underlying channels of intergenerational earnings persistence using a path analysis model. On closer examination, such a model has a potential shortcoming since the covariates are correlated to other unobserved factors. The results suggest that education is the most influential mechanism in the earnings transmission process, while IQ, mental ability and BMI are of secondary importance. However, education is sensitive to the inclusion of other covariates and the order in which these are entered into the equation.
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| 15. |
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| 16. |
- Sundström, Andreas, 1983-
(author)
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Taking accounting to the stage - what is the role of accounting in a theater?
- 2010
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In: <em>6th interdisciplinary workshop on intangibles, intellectual capital & extra-financial information, EIASM, Catania, September-October. </em>.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In arts and culture organizations significant targets referrers to intangible value creation that is difficult to measure. Aiming to support further improvements in approaching non-measureable value creation in accounting and management accounting, this paper discusses the role of accounting in the context of a publicly funded theater. The research design comprises two case studies and a literature review. A theoretical framework for the analysis is synthesized from arts management and accounting literature on intangibles and intellectual capital. The findings imply that accounting in a theater organization is multi-facetted; the role of accounting may be explained as having two different general tasks, an internal and an external task, which both occur in a tangible and an abstract dimension. Drawing from arts management theory, the paper suggests that accounting in an art firm can be viewed as an 'aesthetic play' in which given accounts are actors that need to be given place to play in order for intangible performance to render visible.
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| 17. |
- Acemoglu, Daron, et al.
(author)
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The Environment and Directed Technical Change
- 2010
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This paper introduces endogenous and directed technical change in a growth model with environmental constraints. A unique final good is produced by combining inputs from two sectors. One of these sectors uses “dirty” machines and thus creates environmental degradation. Research can be directed to improving the technology of machines in either sector. We characterize dynamic tax policies that achieve sustainable growth or maximize intertemporal welfare. We show that: (i) in the case where the inputs are sufficiently substitutable, sustainable long-run growth can be achieved with temporary taxation of dirty innovation and production; (ii) optimal policy involves both “carbon taxes” and research subsidies, so that excessive use of carbon taxes is avoided; (iii) delay in intervention is costly: the sooner and the stronger is the policy response, the shorter is the growth transition phase; (iv) the use of an exhaustible resource in dirty input production helps the switch to clean innovation under laissez-faire when the two inputs are substitutes. Under reasonable parameter values and with sufficient substitutability between inputs, it is optimal to redirect technical change towards clean technologies immediately and optimal environmental regulation need not reduce long-run growth.
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| 18. |
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Bos, Marieke, 1974-
(author)
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Essays on Household Finance
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis consists of three self-contained essays on household finance. “Pawn Credit and the Importance of Financial Exclusion” explores the importance of access to regular credit to the demand for pawn credit. I find that the rejection of one's loan application by a regular bank increases the probability that one will take pawn credit, on average, by 9 percent, relative to individuals whose loan application has been granted. However, of all pawn credit borrowers, 73 percent do not even try to get regular bank credit first. For these borrowers, I find that 93 percent are implicitly excluded from regular bank credit at the time they decide to take pawn credit. “Should Credit Remark Be Forgotten? Evidence from a Legally Mandated Removal” (with Leonard Nakamura) analyzes what happens when Swedish law mandates the removal of credit remarks from credit reports after three years. We find that removal induces an abrupt improvement in individuals' credit scores, an improvement that is not reversed in the long run. Further, the excess loan applications caused by the boost in creditworthiness translate into significant access to new credit. We find evidence that only a minority of the individuals who received a credit remark may be inherently high risk which suggests that credit remark removal is welfare enhancing. “Accept or Reject: Do Immigrants Have Less Access to Bank Credit? Evidence from Swedish Pawnshop Customers” asks if immigrants have less access to mainstream credit than their Swedish born counterparts. I find that immigrants are six percent less likely to be accepted when applying for mainstream credit, relative to Swedish born. This holds in particular for immigrants of African descent, who are 15 percent less likely. This effect disappears for second-generation immigrants with African parents. Immigrant pawnshop borrowers that do not apply for mainstream credit before they take pawn credit are found to make well-informed decisions.
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