| 1. |
- Widell, Lars M, 1964-
(författare)
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Essays in International Trade : Measurement, Product Quality, Input-Output Modelling and Tax Evasion
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four independent essays that deal with several measurement aspects within the field of international trade. The measurement problems addressed are related to measuring the human capital content of trade in exports relative to imports or measuring tax evasionEssay 1, The Human Capital Content of Trade and its Measurement. Evidence from Swedish Data, deals with various measurement problems related to calculations of the human capital content of trade in exports relative to imports. This builds on the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek extension to the Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory.Essay 2, Product Quality Adjustment and the Human Capital Content of Trade. A New Computational Framework, builds on the same theoretical background, but introduces a quality-adjustment in the calculations of the human capital content of trade in exports relative to imports, which builds on the idea underlying vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT). Quality adjustment is performed, first, by assuming that a product sold at a higher price has a higher quality than the same product sold at a lower price and, second, by assuming that a highquality product implies a higher content of skilled labour than a low-quality product.Essay 3, Estimation of commodity-by-commodity input–output matrices, focuses on a new method in constructing symmetric input-output tables (SIOTs), which has been termed the Bohlin and Widell model, using data contained within supply- and use-tables (SUTs). One key contribution is that it makes it possible to estimate SIOTs in cases when the underlying SUTs are rectangular. The method also addresses the problem of negative coefficients, a long-standing issue encountered in the derivation of SIOTs.Essay 4, Tax evasion in Kenya and Tanzania: Evidence from missing imports, focuses on estimating the amount of tax evasion in trade between Kenya and Tanzania. The study is empirically focused, and the measurement errors in reported trade flows between both countries are correlated with tax rates, to determine whether the measurement error increases with the tax rate.
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| 2. |
- Mai, Anh, 1986-
(författare)
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Organizing for efficiency : Essays on merger policies, independence of authorities, and technology diffusion
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Institutions are fundamentally sets of rules in a society that help create stability. Organizations are groups of people who may share the same goal. Changes in organizations and institutions will have large effects on the performance of economies. This thesis explores empirical aspects concerning two elements of institutional and organizational design: economic regulations and independent regulatory authorities (IRAs).Essay 1 studies the impact of the 2004 EU merger policy reform on how mergers are reviewed by the European Commission. The EU policy appears to have softened after the reform for unilateral mergers and this may suggest an improvement of merger policy efficiency.Essay 2 compares the merger enforcements in the EU and the US. Our approach is to decompose the differences into policy effects and casemix effects. The EU policy has significantly changed after its 2004 reform. Overall, the results show a convergence between the two policies for dominance mergers after the EU policy reform.Essay 3 constructs an independence index for 109 European IRAs in six different sectors: competition, energy, financial markets, pharmaceuticals, food safety, and telecom. Factor analysis suggests that the heads of the agencies are mostly constrained by four factors: collegial bodies, the judicial system, politics and scope of tasks, and resources.Essay 4 explores a correlation between independence of regulatory authorities and corruption. We find that the authorities in corrupt countries to a large extent rely on collegial bodies but are less tightly controlled by the judicial system, compared with those in “clean” countries.Essay 5 studies the impact of regulation on broadband diffusion speed. The results imply that a strict local loop unbundling policy appears to slow the diffusion speed of fixed broadband. In contrast, a procompetition policy that aims to promote entry has a significant positive impact on the diffusion speed of mobile broadband.
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| 3. |
- Ahlberg, Joakim, 1966-
(författare)
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Multi-unit common value auctions : theory and experiments
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research on auctions that involve more than one identical item for sale was,almost non-existing in the 90’s, but has since then been getting increasing attention. External incentives for this research have come from the US spectrum, sales, the European 3G mobile-phone auctions, and Internet auctions. The policy relevance and the huge amount of money involved in many of them have helped the theory and experimental research advance. But in auctions where values are equal across bidders, common value auctions, that is, when the value depends on some outside parameter, equal to all bidders, the research is still embryonic.This thesis contributes to the topic with three studies. The first uses a Bayesian game to model a simple multi-unit common value auction, the task being to compare equilibrium strategies and the seller’s revenue from three auction formats; the discriminatory, the uniform and the Vickrey auction. The second study conducts an economic laboratory experiment on basis of the first study. The third study comprises an experiment on the multi-unit common value uniform auction and compares the dynamic and the static environments of this format.The most salient result in both experiments is that subjects overbid. They are victims of the winner’s curse and bid above the expected value, thus earning a negative profit. There is some learning, but most bidders continue to earn a negative profit also in later rounds. The competitive effect when participating in an auction seems to be stronger than the rationality concerns. In the first experiment, subjects in the Vickrey auction do somewhat better in small groups than subjects in the other auction types and, in the second experiment, subjects in the dynamic auction format perform much better than subjects in the static auction format; but still, they overbid.Due to this overbidding, the theoretical (but not the behavioral) prediction that the dynamic auction should render more revenue than the static fails inthe second experiment. Nonetheless, the higher revenue of the static auction comes at a cost; half of the auctions yield negative profits to the bidders, and the winner’s curse is more severely widespread in this format. Besides, only a minority of the bidders use the equilibrium bidding strategy.The bottom line is that the choice between the open and sealed-bid formats may be more important than the choice of price mechanism, especially in common value settings.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Ekblad, Kristin, 1975-
(författare)
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The economics of sickness absence : social interactions, local cultures and working conditions
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focus of this thesis is the study of social and psychosocial aspects of sickness absence. In Essay 1, Sickness Absence and Peer Effects – Evidence from a Swedish Municipality, detailed employment records from a Swedish public employer are used to investigate whether sick leave among work group colleagues influences individual sick leave. Our results indicate that a worker’s level of sick leave is positively correlated with sick leave among peers. When length of employment is taken into account, however, we find that this positive peer effect emerges initially after the first few years of employment. In Essay 2, Who Cares about the Colleagues? – Insights into Peer Effect Heterogeneities in Sickness Absence across Gender and Age, I scrutinize the data used in Essay 1 to further investigate the nature of peer effects in sickness absence in relation to gender and age. The results indicate that men, as well as women, are sensitive to their female colleagues but not to their male peers. Moreover, somewhat surprisingly, I find that young and middle-aged workers are sensitive to younger peers, whereas the oldest workers are not sensitive to any of their peers. Essay 3, Sickness Absence and Local Culture, investigates the effect of geographical and presumed cultural context on sickness absence. Our results indicate that the region of residence is important to individual ‘illness-related absence’. In Essay 4, Sickness Absence, Working Conditions and Gender – An Empirical Analysis using Multiltvel Models, I analyse how psychosocial working conditions are related to short- and longterm sick leave and if, and how, these relation-ships vary with gender. The results show that employees who enjoy higher levels of autonomy in their post take fewer periods of short-term sick leave, and that this effect is significantly greater for male workers. The results also show that for female workers, stronger work-group cohesion is related to a lower likelihood of long-term sick leave.
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| 6. |
- Persson, Mattias, 1983-
(författare)
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Economic Evaluation of Mental Health Interventions for Children and Adolescents : the Case of Sweden
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focus of this thesis is economic evaluations of programs and interventions regarding children and adolescents with mental health issues, victimization, and intellectual disabilities (ID). The first paper examines a potential link between mental health issues among adolescent and the class-size of the school class they are enrolled in. The class-size and schools’ financial resources is often at the center of policy debates. Our results suggest that there is no evidence that larger classes have negative impact on the mental health for adolescents in a Swedish context. The second paper investigate the societal willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce bullying in Swedish schools. The results suggest that the tax payers WTP is about 5 SEK and the societal is about 600 000 SEK per reduced bullying victim. This value of WTP could be used as a measure to evaluate different investments in anti-bullying programs and efforts to reduce the bullying in schools. The third paper estimates the cost-effectiveness of one recently introduced antibullying program, the Finnish KiVa program, one of the few evidence based programs in the world. Based on a decision-analytic model, the results indicate that the KiVa program is a cost-effective program that has a cost per reduced victim well below the WTP as estimated in the second paper as documented above. The fourth paper evaluates, from the municipality perspective, the effects of investing in a SE program compared to “business as usual” in order to increase the likelihood for gaining regular employment for the pupils with ID. The results indicate that it takes 9 years before breakeven is reached if investing in the SE program. The fifth paper conducts a decision-analytic economic evaluation of the SE program using simulations to assess the effects over the full life-course. The results suggest that from a societal perspective the program is cost-effective ten years after the investment and by then has generated a benefit of 17 000 SEK per individual.
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| 7. |
- Westin, Jonas, 1980-
(författare)
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Welfare Effects of Transport Policies : an analysis of congestion pricing and infrastructure investments
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Interactions between the transport market and other distorted markets, such as the labor market, can have a large impact on the overall welfare effect of a road pricing policy or a congestion charge. Many road pricing studies therefore try to incorporate effects from other distorted markets in the analysis. A difficulty when assessing the welfare effect of a future transport policy is also that many factors and parameters needed for the analysis is uncertain. This thesis contains three papers all studying different methodological approaches to analyzing the welfare effects of transport policies. The first two papers analyze the welfare effect of congestion pricing in distorted economies. The main contribution of the first paper is to analyze how the welfare effect of a congestion charge in a distorted economy depends on what assumptions we make regarding the tax system in the initial no-toll situation. A critical assumption in many cost-benefit analyses of congestion charges is that the whole population has a single value of time. The second paper studies the effect of a congestion charge in a population of commuters with a continuously distributed value of time. The main contribution of the paper, compared to previous literature, is that it studies the welfare effect and distributional impact of a congestion charge in a population with endogenous labor supply and heterogeneous value of time where mode-choice self-selection plays an important role. The third paper studies the climate benefit of an investment in high speed rail by calculating the magnitude of annual traffic emission reduction required to compensate for the annualized embedded emissions from the construction of the line. To account for uncertainties in underlying assumptions, a Monte Carlo simulation framework is used in the analysis. The paper finds that to be able to balance the annualized emissions from the construction, traffic volumes of more than 10 million annual one-way trips are usually required, and most of the traffic diverted from other transport modes must come from aviation.
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| 8. |
- Aranki, Ted N., 1978-
(författare)
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Wages, unemployment and regional differences : empirical studies of the Palestinian labor market
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four essays analyzing wages, unemployment and regional differences in the Palestinian labor market. Paper [I] investigates the effects of the Israeli closure policy on Palestinian wage earnings. Closure has a significant impact on the Palestinian labor force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, the effect differs between the two regions. The estimated models show that closure affects the Gaza Strip more than the West Bank. This could indicate that external closure is more damaging than internal closure. The reason is that external closure has been more strictly enforced in the Gaza Strip compared to the West Bank, which has suffered from a more severe internal closure. Paper [II] examines the effects of foreign workers on labor market outcomes for Palestinian workers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The data covers the period 1999-2003, a period in which Israel enforced a strict closure on labor (and goods) movement. The evidence suggests that foreign workers in Israel do not affect Palestinian employment; however, an increase in the number of foreign workers in Israel tends to reduce Israeli wages paid to Gazans. The Israeli closure policy appears to be the main cause of the substantial reduction in long-run Palestinian employment levels in Israel, not the presence of foreign workers. Paper [III] (co-authored with Yousef Daoud) investigates the determinants of unemployment duration in the Palestinian territories. This paper is the first study analyzing unemployment duration for Palestinian males; it covers a sensitive period (1999-2003) which in part witnessed a sharp increase in unemployment resulting from the closure of the Israeli labor market to many Palestinians. Non-parametric, semi-parametric, and full parametric methods were used to investigate the importance of individual and local labor market characteristics. The results indicate no significant differences between semi- and full-parametric methods. The Intifada has significantly lowered the hazard rate throughout the Palestinian territories, however, more so for the West Bank than the Gaza Strip. The probability of leaving unemployment is substantially lower in Gaza. Thus, the risk of long-term unemployment for individuals becoming unemployed is higher in that region. Paper [IV] estimates the economic returns to schooling in the Palestinian territories, and examines the relationship between household characteristics and the returns received by male household members in the labor market. The basic findings are that the economic returns to schooling are very low. Yet, the least-square estimate of the economic returns to schooling in Palestine is overestimated because of omitted unobservable household characteristics from the wage-schooling relationship. This is true even after correcting for measurement error in the schooling variable. The measurement-error-corrected least-square estimator of the returns to schooling is overestimated by 32 percent. Nevertheless, the omitted variable bias is of different magnitude in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In fact, the least-square estimator of the returns to schooling in the West Bank is more biased upwards, due to omitted unobservable household characteristics, than measurement error biases the estimated returns downwards. The results for the Gaza Strip indicate on the contrary no such bias, as the upward bias due to omitted variables is roughly offset by the attenuation bias due to errors in the measurement of schooling.
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| 9. |
- Bohlin, Lars
(författare)
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Taxation of intermediate goods : a CGE analysis
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is concerned with tax rates for the use of commodities in general, and energy in particular. Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models are used to analyze the normative question of whether the tax rate for intermediate use by firms should be the same as the tax rate for final consumption by households. To answer this question, a distinction needs to be made between fiscal taxes for the purpose of raising revenue for the government, and Pigovian taxes for the purpose of changing behaviour. Concerning fiscal taxes, firms should not pay taxes on their use of inputs if the tax rates in final consumption are at their optimal level. If the tax rate for households is above the optimal level, intermediate use in firms should be taxed in order to increase the price of other commodities and reduce the distortion of relative prices. Essay 1 ascertains what factors determine the optimal relation between the tax rate for final consumption by households and intermediate use by firms. Essay 2 analyses Swedish energy taxes from the perspective of reducing global emission of CO2. It is found that the welfare maximizing tax rates are equal for households and firms not participating in emission trading, while firms that participate in emission trading should have a zero tax rate. Essays 3 and 4 deal with methodological issues. Essay 3 derives a new method for estimation of symmetric input-output tables from supply and use tables. This method solves the problem of negative coefficients, makes it possible to use both the industry and commodity technology assumptions simultaneously and enables the commodity technology assumption to be used even when the number of commodities is larger than the number of industries. Essay 4 describes the model used in the first two essays. The price structure developed here makes it possible to take into account price differences between different purchasers other than differences in tax rates. This essay also makes a comparison between the Swedish implementation of this model and other Swedish CGE-models used to analyse climate policy and energy taxation.
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| 10. |
- Deschamps-Laporte, Jean-Philippe, 1985-
(författare)
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Essays on welfare and debt : From impact evaluation in Kenya to Canadian housing markets
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is comprised of two independent essays on the topics of impact evaluation, and one essay on the housing wealth-effect. The essays address key questions on welfare and spending decisions made by households when subject to government assistance programs and increases in housing prices.The first essay deals with a large scale pro-poor government assistance program in Kenya. It studies the impact of extension services on rural households, to understand whether the SIDA-funded program led to sustainable improvements in the treated households’ livelihoods. The results suggest that the treated households increased fertilizer dosage, and had higher household expenditures. However, the treatment did not impact farming revenues and output.The second essay investigates a novel labelled cash transfer program in agriculture in Kenya. This essay documents the impacts of the program to draw a relationship between the treatment and farm output and revenue, as well as basic welfare indicators at the household level. The results show that while household expenditures were higher following the reception of the labelled cash transfer, farm yields and revenues were not improved by the intervention.The third essay analyses the relationship between housing prices and consumer debt in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Using administrative data and an implementation of the Arellano-Bond estimator, this essay shows that, even as residential property values climbed very rapidly, consumers did not engage in additional non-mortgage debt, in particular consumers who planned to stay in their home for the following twelve months.
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