| 1. |
- Alirani, Gertrud, 1976-
(författare)
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Miljöintegrering i praktisk tillämpning : En policystudie av två lokala stadsutvecklingsprocesser
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Dealing with environmental problems has become one of the most challenging political issues of our time. Since the Brundtland report in 1987, environmental policy integration (EPI) that is, the mainstreaming of environmental issues in all policy sectors has emerged as a viable policy solution. This has meant that responsibility for implementing environmental policy rests to a large extent on local authorities where environmental problems with both local and global consequences are expected to be handled. However, there is still a disagreement on what EPI means in day-to-day decision making. With a theoretical framework drawing from theory on policy change, policy entrepreneurship and the neoinstitutional “logic of appropriateness” the aim of this dissertation is to analyze how the integration of environmental considerations manifests itself in local policy processes, highlighting what factors foster or hinder EPI. To reach this aim, I have followed two urban development processes in Kristianstad. This research offers insights on how EPI varies through the policy process and how focus is placed mainly on certain environmental issues and chiefly defined as of local importance. My study suggest that arenas for coordination are critical to overcoming the perceived “gap” between EPI on a strategic level and its implementation. This can help to clarify responsibility allocation among bureaucrats and their leeway for interpretation when new issues comes up continuously during the processes and affect the conditions for EPI. Furthermore, the dissertation gives insights on how acting “entrepreneurially” can enable an environmental issue to be included and given priority. This can also be a barrier if the ones acting entrepreneurially are not part of the entire process because the issue might receive less attention. In addition, if too much attention is given to one issue it might overshadow other environmental issues. Conversely, acting according to “the logic of appropriateness” can enable EPI by enhancing a more all-encompassing perspective on environmental considerations and also function as a cautious approach to radical change by preventing measures taken in absence of democratic legitimacy. By using the two theoretical perspectives, “entrepreneurial” and “appropriate” agency, this dissertation offers important insights into how different ways of acting interact and affect EPI and its outcome.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Bonander, Carl, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
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Universities as engines for regional growth? : Using the synthetic control method to analyze the effects of research universities
- 2016
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Ingår i: Regional Science and Urban Economics. - : Elsevier. - 0166-0462 .- 1879-2308. ; 60, s. 198-207
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Are research universities important for regional growth and development? We study the impact on the regional economy of granting research university status to three former university colleges in three different regions in Sweden. We analyze the development in the treated regions compared to a set of control regions that are created using the synthetic control method. We find small or no effects on the regional economy. Our findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of research universities in fostering regional growth and development We contribute to the existing research by using a more credible identification strategy in assessing the effects of universities on the regional economy compared to what has usually been used in previous studies.
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| 4. |
- Helena, Nilsson
(författare)
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The impact of big-boxes on local retail : What happens when IKEA comes to town?
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The development of large discount retailers, or big-boxes as they are sometimes referred to, are often subject to heated debate and their entry on a market is greeted with either great enthusiasm or dread. For instance, the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart (Forbes 2014) has a number of anti- and pro-groups dedicated to its being and the event of a Wal-Mart entry tends to be met with protests and campaigns (Decamme 2013) but also welcomed by, for instance, consumers (Davis & DeBonis 2013). Also in Sweden, the entry of a big box is a hot topic and before IKEA’s opening i Borlänge 2013, the first in Sweden in more than five years, great expectations were mixed with worry (Västerbottens-Kuriren 2011).The presence of large scale discount retailers is not, however, a novel phenomenon but a part of a long-term change in retailing that has taken place globally over the past couple of decades (Taylor & Smalling, 2005). As noted by Dawson (2006), the trend in Europe has over the past few decades gone towards an increasing concentration of large firms along with a decrease of smaller firms.This trend is also detectable in the Swedish retail industry. Over the past decade, the retailing industry in Sweden has increased by around 190 Billion SEK, and its share of GDP has risen from 2,7% to 2,9%, while the number of employees have increased from 200 000 to 250 000 (HUI 2013). This growth, however, has not been distributed evenly but rather it has been oriented mainly towards out-of-town retail clusters. Parallel to this development, the number of large retailers has risen at the expense of market shares of smaller independent firms (Rämme et al 2010). Thereby, the presence of large scale retailers is simply part of a changing retail landscape.The effects of this development, where large scale retailing agents relocate shopping to out-of-town shopping areas, have been heavily debated. On the one hand, the big-boxes are accused of displacing independent small retail businesses in the city-centers and the residential areas, resulting in, to some extent, reduced employment opportunities and less availability for the consumers - especially the elderly (Ljungberg et al 2006). In addition, as access to shopping now tends to require some sort of a motorized vehicle, environmental aspects to the discussion have emerged. Ultimately these types of concerns have resulted in calls for regulations against this development (Olsson 2010). On the other hand, the proponents of the new shopping landscape argue that this evolution implies productivity gains, the benefits of lower prices and an increased variety of products (Maican & Orth 2012). Moreover it is argued that it leads to, for instance, better services (such as longer opening hours) and a creative destruction transformation pressure on retailers, which brings about a renewal of city-centerIIretail and services, increasing their attractivity (Bergström 2010). The belief in benefits of a big box entry can be exemplified by the attractivity of IKEA, and the fact that municipalities are prepared to commit to expenses amounting up to hundreds of millions in order to attract the entry of this big-box. Borlänge municipality, for instance, agreed to expenses of about 350 million SEK in order to secure the entry of IKEA, which opened in 2013 (Blomgren 2009).Against this backdrop, the overall effects of large discount retailers become important: Are the economic benefits enough to warrant subsidies or are there, on the contrary, some very compelling grounds for regulations against these types of establishments? In other words; how is overall retail in a region where a store like IKEA enters affected? And how are local retail firms affected?In order to answer these questions, the purpose of this thesis is to study how entry of a big-box retailer affects the entry region. The object of this study is IKEA - one of the world’s largest retailers, with 345 stores, active in over 40 countries and with profits of about 3.3 billion (IKEA 2013; IKEA 2014). By studying the effects of IKEA-entry, both on an aggregated level and on firm level, this thesis intends to find indications of how large discount retail establishments in general can be expected to affect the economic development both in a region overall, but also on the local firm level, something which is of interest to both policymakers as well as the retailing industry in general.The first paper examines the effects of IKEA on retail revenues and employment in the municipalities that IKEA chose to enter between 2000 and 2011; Gothenburg, Haparanda, Kalmar and Karlstad. By means of a matching method we first identify non-entry municipalities that have a similar probability of IKEA entry as the true entry municipalities. Then, using these non-entry municipalities as a control group, the causal effects of IKEA entry can be estimated using a treatment-control approach. We also extend the analysis to examine the spatial impact of IKEA by estimating the effects on retail in neighboring municipalities. It is found that a new IKEA store increases revenues in durable goods trade with 20% in the entry municipality and the number of employees with 17%. Only small, and in most cases statistically insignificant, negative effects were found in neighboring municipalities.It appears that there is a positive net effect on durables retail sales and employment in the entry municipality. However, the analysis is based on data on an aggregated municipality level and thereby it remains unclear if and how the effects vary within the entry municipalities. In addition, the data used in the first study includes the sales and employment of IKEA itself, which could account for the majority of the increases in employment and retail. Thereby the potential spillover effects on incumbent retailers in the entry municipalities cannot be discerned in the first study.IIITo examine effects of IKEA entry on incumbent retail firms, the second paper in this thesis analyses how IKEA entry affects the revenues and employment of local retail firms in three municipalities; Haparanda, Kalmar and Karlstad, which experienced entry by IKEA between 2000 and 2010. In this second study, we exclude Gothenburg due to the fact that big-box entry appears to have weaker effects in metropolitan areas (as indicated by Artz & Stone 2006). By excluding Gothenburg we aim to reduce the geographical heterogeneity in our study. We obtain control municipalities that are as similar as possible to the three entry municipalities using the same method as in the previous study, but including a slightly different set of variables in the selection equation. Using similar retail firms in the control municipalities as our comparison group, we estimate the impact of IKEA entry on revenues and employment for retail firms located at varying distances from the IKEA entry site.The results generated in this study imply that entry by IKEA increases revenues in incumbent retail firms by, on average, 11% in the entry municipalities. In addition, we do not find any significant impact on retail revenues in the city centers of the entry municipalities. However, we do find that retail firms within 1 km of the IKEA experience increases in revenues of about 26%, which indicates large spillover effects in the area nearby the entry site. As expected, this impact decreases as we expand the buffer zone: firms located between 0-2 km experiences a 14% increase and firms in 2-5 km experiences an increase of 10%. We do not find any significant impacts on retail employment.
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| 5. |
- Jakobsson, Niklas, Docent, 1981-, et al.
(författare)
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Copayments and physicians visits: A panel data study of Swedish regions 2003-2012
- 2016
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Ingår i: Health Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0168-8510 .- 1872-6054. ; 120:9, s. 1095-1099
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: This paper analyzes how primary care physician visits are affected by the level of copayment in Sweden. Data source: We use data between the years 2003-2012 from 21 Swedish health care regions that have the mandate to set their own level of copayment. The copayment per visit varies between 10 and 20 for these years and regions. Study design: Our strategy to identify the causal effect and deal with unobserved endogeneity of price changes on physician visits is based on a panel data model using fixed effects to control for region and time and regional-variation in time trends. Principal finding: We cannot reject that the copayment has no statistical or economic effect of significance, and we estimate the "zero effect" with very high precision. Conclusion: In a setting with sub-national regions with autonomy to set copayments the results points to that the copayment is not an important predictor for the number of health care visits. The result is in line with some previous studies on European data where the range of copayments used tends to be relatively low. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 6. |
- Johansson, Naimi, 1988, et al.
(författare)
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Effects of primary care cost-sharing among young adults : Varying impact across income groups and gender
- 2019
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Ingår i: European Journal of Health Economics. - : Springer. - 1618-7598 .- 1618-7601. ; 20:8, s. 1271-1280
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We estimate the price sensitivity in health care among adolescents and young adults, and assess how it varies across income groups and gender, using a regression discontinuity design. We use the age differential cost-sharing in Swedish primary care as our identification strategy. At the 20th birthday, the copayment increases from €0 to approx. €10 per primary care physician visit and close to this threshold the copayment faced by each person is distributed almost as good as if randomized. The analysis is performed using high-quality health care and economic register data of 73,000 individuals aged 18–22. Our results show that the copayment decreases the average number of visits by 7%. Among women visits are reduced by 9%, for low-income individuals by 11%, and for low-income women by 14%. In conclusion, modest copayments have significant utilization effects, and even in a policy context with relatively low income inequalities, the effect is substantially larger in low-income groups and among women.
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| 7. |
- Kolseth, Anna-Karin, 1976-
(författare)
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Evolutionary Processes and Spatial Genetic Variation in Euphrasia stricta on the Baltic Island of Gotland
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The identification of processes governing genetic structure at different spatial scales remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology and is of considerable applied interest in conservation biology. In Euphrasia stricta five varieties have been identified (brevipila, gotlandica, stricta, suecica and tenuis) based on differences in habitat, phenology and morphology. In this thesis, I examined genetic variation at AFLP and microsatellite marker loci in relation to variation in habitat and morphology within and among varieties of E. stricta on the island Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The results are discussed in relation to evolutionary processes acting within this species complex.In a study conducted at the regional scale, the two early-flowering varieties suecica and tenuis each formed a genetically distinct group, while the three late-flowering varieties brevipila, gotlandica and stricta formed a third group. The results suggest that suecica and tenuis have ancient origins since they are genetically different both from the brevipila/gotlandica/stricta group and from each other despite their similar habitat preferences. This pattern was obtained using both marker systems. Discrepancies between AFLP and microsatellites were found in patterns of isolation by distance and in estimates of expected heterozygosity, He.Focusing on the mixed genetic group brevipila/gotlandica/stricta and the causes behind their clustering together despite differences in morphology and habitat preferences, I performed a study at a smaller geographic scale. Studying a population of E. stricta I found that, although gene flow within the population was strong, it had not prevented the formation of genetic groups associated with micro-habitat properties.An important result for conservation of the rare variety suecica is its distinct genetic separation from variety tenuis. If the aim of conservation is to preserve the uniqueness of suecica, the two varieties should be treated as separated entities.
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| 8. |
- Parker, Louis P., et al.
(författare)
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Cannulation configuration and recirculation in venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- 2022
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Nature. - 2045-2322. ; 12:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is a treatment for acute respiratory distress syndrome. Femoro-atrial cannulation means blood is drained from the inferior vena cava and returned to the superior vena cava; the opposite is termed atrio-femoral. Clinical data comparing these two methods is scarce and conflicting. Using computational fluid dynamics, we aim to compare atrio-femoral and femoro-atrial cannulation to assess the impact on recirculation fraction, under ideal conditions and several clinical scenarios. Using a patient-averaged model of the venae cavae and right atrium, commercially-available cannulae were positioned in each configuration. Additionally, occlusion of the femoro-atrial drainage cannula side-holes with/without reduced inferior vena cava inflow (0-75%) and retraction of the atrio-femoral drainage cannula were modelled. Large-eddy simulations were run for 2-6L/min circuit flow, obtaining time-averaged flow data. The model showed good agreement with clinical atrio-femoral recirculation data. Under ideal conditions, atrio-femoral yielded 13.5% higher recirculation than femoro-atrial across all circuit flow rates. Atrio-femoral right atrium flow patterns resembled normal physiology with a single large vortex. Femoro-atrial cannulation resulted in multiple vortices and increased turbulent kinetic energy at > 3L/min circuit flow. Occluding femoro-atrial drainage cannula side-holes and reducing inferior vena cava inflow increased mean recirculation by 11% and 32%, respectively. Retracting the atrio-femoral drainage cannula did not affect recirculation. These results suggest that, depending on drainage issues, either atrio-femoral or femoro-atrial cannulation may be preferrable. Rather than cannula tip proximity, the supply of available venous blood at the drainage site appears to be the strongest factor affecting recirculation.
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| 9. |
- Parker, Louis P., et al.
(författare)
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Computational Fluid Dynamics of the Right Atrium : A Comparison of Modeling Approaches in a Range of Flow Conditions
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Engineering and Science in Medical Diagnostics and Therapy. - : ASME International. - 2572-7958 .- 2572-7966. ; 5:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The right atrium (RA) combines flows from the inferior (IVC) and superior vena cava (SVC). Here RA mixing is simulated using computational fluid dynamics, comparing four modeling approaches. A patient-averaged model (11 M cells) was created from four volunteers. We compared: (1) unsteady k–ω Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) (2) implicit large eddy simulation with second-order upwind convection scheme (iLES-SOU) (3) iLES with bounded-central difference convection scheme (iLES-BCD) and (4) LES with wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity (LES-WALE). A constant inlet flow rate of 6 L/min was applied with both IVC/SVC contributions ranging from 30–70%. A higher density mesh (37 M cells) was also simulated for models 2 and 4 (equal IVC/SVC flow) to assess the accuracy of models 1–4. Results from the 11 M cell LES-WALE model showed good agreement with the 37 M cell meshes. All four 11 M cell models captured the same large-scale flow structures. There were local differences in velocity, time-averaged wall shear stress, and IVC/SVC mixing when compared to LES-WALE, particularly at high SVC flow. Energy spectra and velocity animations from the LES-WALE model suggest the presence of transitional flow. For the general flow structures, all four methods provide similar results, though local quantities can vary greatly. On coarse meshes, the convection scheme and subgrid-scale (SGS) model have a significant impact on results. For RA flows, URANS should be avoided and iLES models are sensitive to convection scheme unless used on a highly resolved grid.
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| 10. |
- Parker, Louis P., et al.
(författare)
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Hemodynamic and recirculation performance of dual lumen cannulas for venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- 2023
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Nature. - 2045-2322. ; 13:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) can be performed with two single lumen cannulas (SLCs) or one dual-lumen cannula (DLC) where low recirculation fraction (Rf) is a key performance criterion. DLCs are widely believed to have lower Rf , though these have not been directly compared. Similarly, correct positioning is considered critical although its impact is unclear. We aimed to compare two common bi-caval DLC designs and quantify R f in several positions. Two different commercially available DLCs were sectioned, measured, reconstructed, scaled to 27Fr and simulated in our previously published patient-averaged computational model of the right atrium (RA) and venae cavae at 2–6 L/min. One DLC was then used to simulate ± 30° and ± 60° rotation and ± 4 cm insertion depth. Both designs had low Rf (< 7%) and similar SVC/IVC drainage fractions and pressure drops. Both cannula reinfusion ports created a high-velocity jet and high shear stresses in the cannula (> 413 Pa) and RA (> 52 Pa) even at low flow rates. Caval pressures were abnormally high (16.2–23.9 mmHg) at low flow rates. Rotation did not significantly impact Rf . Short insertion depth increased Rf (> 31%) for all flow rates whilst long insertion only increased Rf at 6 L/min (24%). Our results show that DLCs have lower Rf compared to SLCs at moderate-high flow rates (> 4 L/min), but high shear stresses. Obstruction from DLCs increases caval pressures at low flow rates, a potential reason for increased intracranial hemorrhages. Cannula rotation does not impact Rf though correct insertion depth is critical.
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