| 1. |
- Cederlöf, Jonas, 1987-
(författare)
-
Job Loss: Consequences and Labor Market Policy
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Essay I: This paper takes a novel approach to estimating the effects of involuntary job loss on future earnings, wages and employment. Whereas the previous literature has relied on mass layoffs and plant closures for exogenous variation in displacement, I use the fact that who is laid off is often determined by a seniority rule, specifically the last-in-first-out (LIFO) rule. This feature enables me to study also smaller sized layoffs affecting a broader set of workers. Using matched employer-employee data from Sweden, in combination with detailed individual-level data on layoff notifications, I rank workers according to relative seniority and identify establishment/occupation specific discontinuities in the probability of displacement which I exploit in a regression discontinuity framework. I find that displaced workers on average suffer large initial earnings losses of about 38 percent, but in contrast to previous studies, earnings recover fully within 7 years. I then exploit the heterogeneity across layoffs to examine when, and under what circumstances, the cost of displacement are most persistent. I show that persistent earnings losses are mainly associated with very large layoff events and that a substantive share of these losses are attributable to general equilibrium effects.
|
|
| 2. |
- Hall, Caroline, 1979-
(författare)
-
Empirical Essays on Education and Social Insurance Policies
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay 1: This paper evaluates the effects of the introduction of a more comprehensive upper secondary school system in Sweden in the 1990s. The reform reduced the differences between the academic and vocational educational tracks through prolonging and substantially increasing the academic content of all vocational tracks. The effects of this policy change are identified by exploiting a six year pilot scheme, which preceded the actual reform in some municipalities. The results show that the prolongation of the vocational tracks brought about an increased probability of dropping out among low performing students. Though one important motive behind the policy change was to enable all upper secondary school graduates to pursue a university degree, I find no effects on university enrolment or graduation. There are some indications, however, that attending the longer and more academic vocational tracks may have led to increased earnings in the long run. Essay 2: (co-authored with Peter Fredriksson, Elly-Ann Johansson and Per Johansson) We examine whether the impact of pre-school interventions on cognitive skills differs by immigrant background. The analysis is based on Swedish data containing information on childcare attendance, rich family background information, the performance on cognitive tests at age 13, and long-run educational attainment for cohorts born between 1967 and 1982. We find that childcare attendance reduces the gap in language skills between children from immigrant backgrounds relative to native-born children. We find no differential effects on inductive skills, however. Nor does childcare appear to affect the distribution of long-run educational attainment. Essay 3: (co-authored with Laura Hartman) This paper studies a specific type of moral hazard that arises in the interplay between two large public insurance systems in Sweden, namely the sickness insurance (SI) and the unemployment insurance (UI). Moral hazard can arise from the structure of the benefit levels as for some unemployed persons benefits from the SI are higher than benefits from the UI. We use a reform of the SI system that came into force on 1 July 2003 to identify the effect of economic incentives arising from the different benefit levels. The purpose of the reform was to eliminate the difference in benefits between the two insurance systems. Our results from a duration analysis show clearly that the higher the sickness benefits, the higher the probability of reporting sick. Essay 4: Previous research suggests that there are substantial interactions between the unemployment insurance (UI) and the sickness insurance (SI) in Sweden. Moral hazard arises in the interplay between these two social insurance systems, since by reporting sick an unemployed person can postpone the UI expiration date and sometimes also receive considerably higher benefits. This paper examines whether these interactions affect the transition rate from unemployment to employment. To study this question I utilize a reform which greatly reduced the incentives for unemployed persons to transfer to the SI. While there is evidence that this reform substantially lowered the incidence of sick reports among the unemployed, I find no evidence suggesting that the reduced sick report rate in turn affected the transition rate to employment.
|
|
| 3. |
- Henriksson, Dorcus Kiwanuka, 1976-
(författare)
-
Health systems bottlenecks and evidence-based district health planning : Experiences from the district health system in Uganda
- 2017
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In low-income countries where maternal and child mortality remains high, there is limited use of context-specific evidence for decision making and prioritization of interventions in the planning process at the sub-national level, such as the district level. Knowledge on the utility of tools and interventions to promote use of district-specific evidence in the planning process is limited, yet it could contribute to the prioritization of high-impact interventions for women and children.This thesis aims to investigate, in the planning process, the use of district-specific evidence to identify gaps in service delivery in the district health system in Uganda in order to contribute to improving health services for women and children.Study I evaluated the use of the modified Tanahashi model to identify bottlenecks for service delivery of maternal and newborn interventions. Study II and III used qualitative methods to document the experiences of district managers in adopting tools to facilitate the utilization of district-specific evidence, and the barriers and enablers to the use of these tools in the planning process. Study IV used qualitative methods, and analysis of district annual health work plans and reports.District managers were able to adopt tools for the utilization of district-specific evidence in the planning process. Governance and leadership were a major influence on the use of district-specific evidence. Limited decision space and fiscal space, and limited financial resources, and inadequate routine health information systems were also barriers to the utilization of district-specific evidence.Use of district-specific evidence in the planning process is not an end in itself but part of a process to improve the prioritization of interventions for women and children. In order to prioritize high impact interventions at the district level, a multifaceted approach needs to be taken that not only focuses on use of evidence, but also focuses on broader health system aspects like governance and leadership, the decision and fiscal space available to the district managers, limited resources, and inadequate routine health information systems.
|
|
| 4. |
- Johansson, Elly-Ann, 1978-
(författare)
-
Essays on schooling, gender, and parental leave
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay 1: Mixed-aged classes (MA-classes) are a common phenomenon around the world. In Sweden, these types of classes increased rapidly during the 1980:s and 1990:s, despite the fact that existing empirical support for MA-classes is weak. In this paper, we estimate the effect of attending an MA-class during grades 4-6 on students’ cognitive skills. Using a unique survey with information on students, parents and teachers, we are able to control for many factors that could otherwise bias the results. We find a negative effect on short-run cognitive skills, as measured by grade 6 cognitive tests, and this effect is robust to a rigorous sensitivity analysis. Essay 2: We examine whether the impact of pre-school interventions on cognitive skills differs by immigrant background. The analysis is based on Swedish data containing information on childcare attendance, rich family background information, the performance on cognitive tests at age 13, and long-run educational attainment for cohorts born between 1967 and 1982. We find that childcare attendance reduces the gap in language skills between children from immigrant backgrounds relative to native-born children. We find no differential effects on inductive skills, however. Nor does childcare appear to affect the distribution of long-run educational attainment. Essay 3: This paper estimates the effect of child gender on mothers’ and fathers’ parental leave. The focus on Sweden, a highly gender equal society, yields additional knowledge on the prevalence of gender biases in industrialized countries. The results show that a first born son increases fathers’ parental leave with 0.6 days (1.5 percent) and decreases mothers’ leave by a similar amount, leaving the total leave unchanged. Both the sign and size of this effect is in line with previous research. However, there are interesting differences between groups that departs from previous studies. Non-traditional families, with high maternal relative earnings and/or educational levels, show even larger gender biases, indicating that it may be mothers, rather than fathers, that are the driving force behind this child gender bias. Essay 4: This paper investigates the effect of parental leave – both own and spousal – on subsequent earnings using different sources of variation. Using fixed-effects models, and in line with previous results, parental leave is found to decrease each parent’s future earnings. Also spousal leave is important, but only for mothers. In fact, each month the father stays on parental leave has a larger positive effect on maternal earnings than a similar reduction in the mother’s own leave. Using two reforms of the parental leave system as exogenous sources of variation yields only imprecisely estimated effects, even though the reforms had a strong effect on parental leave usage. However, the point estimates tentatively suggest effects in the same range or larger than the fixed-effects model found.
|
|
| 5. |
- Si, Wei, 1988-
(författare)
-
Empirical Essays in Labor and Development Economics
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three self-contained empirical essays in labor and development economics.Diverse Expertise, Peer Effects, and Research Productivity: Does diversity in idea space matter? We empirically explore whether the cognitive distance between collaborators affects peer effects and productivity in creating knowledge. We measure the cognitive distance between two researchers based on their publication distributions and citation relations across academic journals in which they have publications. Using individual-level panel data from the Web of Science databases of academic papers published from 1980 to 2013, we estimate the changes in productivity of the coauthors of active and eminent life scientists who passed away unexpectedly and prematurely to examine whether the impacts on coauthors differ with the cognitive distance. The results show that cognitively close coauthors are more likely to experience a lasting decrease in research productivity for both quantity and quality measures, while cognitively distant coauthors are affected mainly in output quantity. The findings suggest that both knowledge spillovers and skill complementarity play a role in collaborations. The loss of an irreplaceable source of ideas seems to have a more adverse impact on a scientist's productivity than the potentially imperfect skill substitution that follows such a loss.Public Health Insurance and the Labor Market: Evidence from China's Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance provides empirical evidence on labor market effects of public health insurance, using evidence from a national public health insurance program in China, the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI), which targeted residents in urban areas, who were not insured by the pre-existing employment-based health insurance. I find that the URBMI did not have a significant average causal effect on employment for the sample as a whole. However, URBMI increased self-employment among workers who used to be employees in the formal sector, indicating a reduction in job lock. After the program was implemented, employment in the informal sector among women and the lower-educated increased, while labor supply among people with more schooling decreased. The results are consistent with evidence of the labor market impacts of public health insurance on reducing job lock, increasing informality, and affecting labor supply for different sub-populations.Higher Education and Women's Empowerment: Evidence from China's Higher Education Expansion studies the impact of higher education on women’s empowerment, taking advantage of China’s higher education expansion in the late 1990s. Higher education may potentially foster women’s empowerment by reducing gender stereotyping and promoting women in the labor market. I estimate the impacts on educational attainment, attitudes on gender norms, labor market outcomes, and marital matching. The empirical results show that the reform has significantly increased higher educational attainment for women. However, it did not change traditional gender norms and marital matching patterns concerning labor market outcomes. The results may be attributed to the fact that there was no improvement of women’s disadvantaged status in the labor market and households after the expansion. The findings suggest that it is critical to promote gender equality in the labor market and help women to overcome the dilemma between career and family to foster female empowerment.
|
|
| 6. |
- Sigurdsson, Jósef, 1985-
(författare)
-
Essays on Labor Supply and Adjustment Frictions
- 2019
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Labor Supply Responses and Adjustment Frictions: A Tax-Free Year in IcelandHow does labor supply respond to a temporary wage change? To answer this question, I study an unexpected and salient tax reform in Iceland in 1987 that resulted in a year free of labor income taxes, but creating only minimal income effects, offering an ideal natural experiment. I first construct a new employer-employee dataset from digitized administrative records for the population. I then use two complementary research designs to estimate Frisch elasticities. The first design, which is standard, exploits the progressivity of the tax system and identifies an intensive-margin elasticity of 0.4. The second design, which is new, uses similarities in life-patterns of labor supply and identifies an extensive-margin semi-elasticity of 0.07. Guided by a combination of machine learning and causal estimation, I uncover three key mechanisms behind these responses. First, the young and those close to retirement drive the extensive-margin response. Second, workers with temporal flexibility and the hourly paid have substantially higher elasticities than constrained workers. However, constrained workers take up secondary jobs, which contribute 7% of the overall responses. Third, married women are more responsive than their husbands. Husbands, but not wives, respond negatively to their spouses' tax cuts, inconsistent with unitary household models. My results imply that voluntary changes in work are key to the transmission of aggregate shocks, but the responses depend on labor-market and demographic structures.The Gift of Moving: Intergenerational Consequences of a Mobility ShockWe exploit a volcanic "experiment" to study the costs and benefits of geographic mobility. We show that moving costs (broadly defined) are very large and labor therefore does not flow to locations where it earns the highest returns. In our experiment, a third of the houses in a town were covered by lava. People living in these houses where much more likely to move away permanently. For those younger than 25 years old who were induced to move, the "lava shock" dramatically raised lifetime earnings and education. Yet, the benefits of moving were very unequally distributed within the family: Those older than 25 (the parents) were made slightly worse off by the shock. The large gains from moving for the young are surprising in light of the fact that the town affected by our volcanic experiment was (and is) a relatively high income town. We interpret our findings as evidence of the importance of comparative advantage: the gains to moving may be very large for those badly matched to the location they happened to be born in, even if differences in average income are small.Time-Dependent or State-Dependent Wage-Setting? Evidence from Periods of Macroeconomic InstabilityAdministrative data on monthly wages in Iceland during 1998-2010 provide new insight into nominal wage rigidity. Unlike the data used in previous work, ours have a higher frequency, minimal measurement error, and a long sample including a period of substantial macroeconomic instability. We find that the monthly frequency of nominal wage changes is 13 percent. Although nominal wage cuts are rare, their frequency rises following a large macroeconomic shock. Timing of wage changes is both time-dependent and state-dependent: we find evidence of synchronization of adjustment and contracts of fixed duration, but also that inflation and unemployment over the wage spell affect the timing of adjustment.Household Debt and Monetary Policy: Revealing the Cash-Flow ChannelWe examine the effect of monetary policy on household spending when households are indebted and interest rates on outstanding loans are linked to short-term interest rates. Using administrative data on balance sheets and consumption expenditure of Swedish households, we reveal the cash-flow transmission channel of monetary policy. On average, indebted households reduce consumption spending by an additional 0.25-0.35 percentage points in response to a one percentage point increase in the policy rate, relative to a household with no debt. This is true both among households with low and high levels of illiquid wealth, such as homeowners, who hold disproportionally little liquid wealth and display hand-to-mouth behavior when faced with increased interest expenses. We show that these responses are driven by households that have some or a large share of their debt in contracts where interest rates vary with short-term interest rates, such as adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which implies that monetary policy shocks are quickly passed through to interest expenses.
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
- Ek, Simon
(författare)
-
Structural Change, Match Quality, and Integration in the Labor Market
- 2023
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Essay I: Are workers with poor outside opportunities less responsive and more susceptible to negative demand shifts in routine occupations? To answer this, I create and estimate an occupation specialization index (OSI) using Swedish register data and machine learning tools. It measures the expected difference in utility between a worker's occupation and his best non-routine outside option. This determines the loss he is willing to tolerate to avoid switching. Low-OSI employees disproportionately left routine work. Their future wage growth was akin to comparable workers initially in non-routine occupations. By contrast, routine specialists largely stayed put and experienced lower wage growth than generalists and non-routine specialists. Essay II (with Adrian Adermon, Georg Graetz, and Yaroslav Yakymovych): Using a new identification strategy, we jointly estimate the growth in occupational wage premia and time-varying occupation-specific life-cycle profiles for Swedish workers 1996–2013. We document a substantial increase in between-occupation wage inequality due to differential growth in premia. The association of wage premium growth and employment growth is positive, suggesting that premium growth is predominantly driven by demand side factors. Essay III (with Peter Fredriksson, Lena Hensvik, and Oskar Nordström Skans): We provide two pieces of evidence that workers' capacity to extract rents from match-specific productivity hinges on their outside options. Using a measure of match quality, derived from the relationship between workers' multidimensional skills and job-specific skill requirements, we show that: (i) wages within ongoing matches are more closely aligned with match quality following an improvement of local labor market conditions; (ii) wages of job-to-job movers are positively related to the match quality in the previous job, even when controlling for previous wage.Essay IV (with Mats Hammarstedt, and Per Skedinger): In a field experiment we study the causal effects of previous work experience and language skills when Syrian refugees in Sweden apply for low-skilled jobs. We find no evidence of sizeable effects from experience or completed language classes on the probability of receiving callback from employers. However, female applicants were more likely than males to receive a positive response. As a complement to the experiment, we interview a select number of employers.
|
|
| 9. |
- Johan, Egebark, 1980-
(författare)
-
Taxes, Nudges, and Conformity : Essays in Labor and Behavioral Economics
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four papers summarized as follows.Do Payroll Tax Cuts Raise Youth Employment? We study whether payroll tax reductions are an effective means to raise youth employment. In 2007, the Swedish employer-paid payroll tax was cut on a large scale for young workers, substantially reducing labor costs for this group. Using the variation in payroll taxes across cohorts, we estimate a significant, but small, impact both on employment and on wages.Effects of Taxes on Youth Self-Employment and Income. I examine the link between taxes and youth self-employment. I make use of a Swedish reform that made the payroll tax and the self-employment tax vary by age. The results suggest that youth self-employment is insensitive to tax reductions, both in the short run and in the somewhat longer run. For those defined as self-employed, I find positive effects on income from self-employment, and negative effects on income from wage employment.Can Indifference Make the World Greener? We conducted a natural field experiment at a large university in Sweden to evaluate the effects of two resource conservation programs. The first intervention consisted of a campaign that actively tried to convince people to cut back on printing in general, and to use double-sided printing whenever possible. The second intervention exploited people's tendency to stick with pre-set alternatives. At random points in time we changed the printers’ default settings, from single-sided to double-sided printing. Whereas the moral appeal had no impact, the default change cut paper use by 15 percent.The Origins of Behavioral Contagion: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Facebook. We explore the micro-level foundations of behavioral contagion by running a natural field experiment on the networking site Facebook. Members of Facebook express positive support to content on the website by clicking a Like button. We show that users are more prone to support content if someone else has done so before.
|
|
| 10. |
- Jönsson, Marie, 1966-
(författare)
-
Everyday activities in older adults readmitted to hospital
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The coordination of health care and social care at discharge are particularly important for older adults with complex health and social needs, as approximately 30 % of these persons are readmitted to hospital on an unplanned basis within three months of discharge. In order to provide adequate care for this group of older adults, we need a deeper understanding of their experiences regarding their functional ability at hospital and at home.The overall aim of this thesis was to describe older readmitted adults in terms of their abilities at hospital, everyday activities at home and of healthcare professionals’ conception of the care of older adults. Four studies were conducted using descriptive design. Data were gathered using four different methods of data collection. In this thesis, older readmitted adults are, defined as persons aged 75 years or older who have been readmitted to hospital on an unplanned basis three or more times within 12 months. In Study I, older adults readmitted to hospital (n=60), were assessed regarding personal activities of daily living, cognitive function, risk of falls, pressure sores and malnutrition. They were compared with samples from the general population. In order to describe everyday activities at home, semi-structured interviews were carried out with older readmitted adults (n=16) in Study II, and with close relatives (n=20) in Study III. In Study IV, focus group interviews were performed with healthcare professionals (n=29) about care at discharge and which measures that may be appropriate in order to prevent readmission.The major findings were that the participants had a higher risk of pressure sores, falls and dependency on ADL at hospital compared to age-matched samples. 40% of the participants had a cognitive limitation. At home, older adults strived to perform everyday activities but the ability was limited. Close relatives described that social relations were fundamental to perform everyday activities and social activities at home. Healthcare professionals stated that older readmitted adults were vulnerable. Multidisciplinary teamwork and geriatric expertise were fundamental but were perceived as lacking. Medical resources and rehabilitation resources should be developed and include rapid follow-up appointments at home in order to prevent readmission.Overall, health care and social care must identify this group and offer preventive assessments and interventions.
|
|
| 11. |
- Muhmond, Haji Muhammad, 1984-
(författare)
-
On the Inoculation and Graphite Morphologies of Cast Iron
- 2014
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research was conducted to understand the nucleation mechanism of graphite flakes and nodules and the effect of various elements on the growth morphology of graphite. Investigations were started on flake graphite cast iron. The effect of S on the graphite morphology and MnS was experimentally analysed. The influence of various type of oxides on the growth morphology of MnS and their relation with the graphite growth morphology was studied carefully through series of experiments, and results were related to the thermodynamic calculations, performed to predict the nucleation of oxides and sulfides at any temperature. The calculations were supported by EDX analysis on particles in the samples, showing sequential nucleation of flake graphite. The austenite volume fraction and the dendrite growth orientations were affected by the addition of Al to the melt. The effect of aluminium oxide and sulfur was studied on the austenite growth morphology with the help of colour etching technique. Thermal analyses were performed to study the effect of sulfur content on austenite volume fraction and growth morphology using DSC. The latent heat of solidification and the rate of austenite formation was studied and related to the sulfur content in the alloy.To study the effect of O and S on the graphite morphology, pure Fe-C alloy was prepared and strong de-oxidizers and de-sulfurizer (Mg, Ca and Sr) were tested. With the help of ion etching and polishing, we were able to reveal the graphite growth morphology. The morphological changes in the graphite were explained by relating it to the composition of the melt in regard of dissolved S and O in the melt. The effect of other trace elements such as S, F, O, N, P, B and Se, was also investigated by testing them on an ultra-pure Fe-C alloy. The possibility of substituting a foreign atom in the basal plane of graphite was analysed based on the bonding energy between C and the foreign atoms. The resulting change in the structure of the basal plane was studied using Avogadro software and the resulting model were compared with the experimental results. The basal plane of nodular, flake and undercooled graphite was studied with the help of HRTEM, which showed differences in the lattice spacing between different graphite morphologies. The latent heat measurement showed that flake graphite have higher energy than the undercooled or vermicular graphite. This research made us enabled to tell about the growth along c-plane in graphite and the reason behind the transition of graphite morphology.The effect of inoculation temperature and inoculation sequence on the nodularity was studied. EDX analysis were performed and the results were compared to the thermodynamic calculations. It was found that, the melt composition is controlling the graphite growth morphologies. Strong de-oxidizers and de-sulfurizer are necessary to reduce O and S to a level where it does not influence the graphite growth morphology. The effect of various elements on the activity of oxygen in the melt is calculated. High Al cast iron was also studied. The major problem associated with this type of alloy was that, the Mg was not effective in producing nodular graphite. Experiments showed that de-oxidizers stronger than Mg are required to increase the nodularity. Thermodynamic calculations showed that the activity of oxygen in the melt was changing strongly by increasing the Al content in the alloy. This was increasing the required oxygen level to nucleate MgO.
|
|
| 12. |
- Ekström, Erika, 1968-
(författare)
-
Essays on Inequality and Education
- 2003
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of an introduction and four self-contained essays.Essay I examines the contribution of socio-economic variables to Namibian income inequality. I examine the extent to which total income inequality is due to within-group inequality or between-group inequality. Income inequality in Namibia ranks among the highest in the world. The within-group inequality seems to be the principal determinant of total inequality. Education is an important factor in determining degrees of between-group inequality.Essay II examines the differences in earnings between males and females in manufacturing, services and the public sector in Namibia. The estimated earnings differences are decomposed into endowment and discrimination components. The results suggest that females are discriminated, but that females have a productivity advantage over the males, which reduces the gross wage differential. Comparing the OLS results with the results accounting for selection, the endowment component is not affected, whereas the discrimination component is reduced.Essay III evaluates the 1991-reform adding a third year in Swedish upper secondary vocational education. One purpose with the additional year was to facilitate university enrolment for students from vocational paths. Reduced forms are applied to estimate the effect of a third year on three outcomes: years of upper secondary education, university enrolment and the rate of inactivity. The results suggest positive effects on university enrolments within six years for individuals with a three-year vocational education, and negative effects on activity.Essay IV evaluates adult secondary education (ASE) in Sweden. ASE offers courses at the compulsory and upper secondary level and is aimed to give adults who lack these types of education. Controlling for pre-programme annual earnings, the estimates suggests that participating in adult secondary education significantly reduces the earnings of native-born males. No effects are found for native-born females, but the results indicate weakly significant positive effects for female immigrants.
|
|
| 13. |
- Eriksson, Jens, 1982-
(författare)
-
The End of Piracy : Rethinking the History of German Print Piracy in the Early Nineteenth Century
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is an historical study of the German book trade in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In this period, German states passed authorial rights reforms that prompted energetic discussions about the definition of authorship and unauthorized reprinting. What was to count as a new publication? What was authorship? How did it differ from book piracy? By addressing these questions, this dissertation advances two principal arguments. The first deals with the idealist reconceptualization of authorship that took place around 1800. I argue that the spread of idealist authorship helped book merchants market recycled publications as new works and defend their publications against the charge of piracy. My second argument concerns the size of the German reprinting industry. Against the widespread view that print piracy came to an end in the early nineteenth century, I argue that disputes over the definition of unauthorized reprinting made the size of the German reprinting industry a contentious matter.The study consists of three empirical chapters. The first examines reactions to the confederal ban on unauthorized reprinting from 1837, as well as the construction of authorship that philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlob Fichte helped establish around 1800. The second chapter explores the history of the Stuttgart publisher Carl Erhard’s Conversations-Lexikon, a publication that was at the heart of the debates studied here. The third chapter focuses on the Leipzig book fair catalog and efforts to quantify the number of new German books published each year. Attempts to quantify new publications raised pressing questions about the difference between new works and reprints. In the ensuing discussions, disputes over the definition reprinting evolved into disagreements over the prevalence of piracy on the book market. In this regard, the controversies raised over the definition of unauthorized reprinting offer lessons about much more than a particular moment in the history of piracy. Taken together, the three chapters grapple with the power of words to not only describe things and practices, but also to shape our perception of entities such as the market.
|
|
| 14. |
- Lagerström, Jonas, 1974-
(författare)
-
Discrimination, Sickness Absence, and Labor Market Policy
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation consists of an introduction and four self-contained essays:Essay 1 (with Stefan Eriksson) investigates empirically whether being unemployed per se reduces the probability of getting contacted by a firm. Individuals registered at the Swedish employment offices post their qualifications in a database available to employers over the Internet. Since we have access to exactly the same information as the firms, we can minimize the problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity. Our results show that an unemployed applicant faces a lower contact probability, and receives fewer contacts, than an otherwise identical employed applicant, thus supporting the notion that firms view employment status as a signal for productivity.Essay 2 evaluates an experiment where employees at randomly chosen establishments received half a day off if they completed a full calendar month without any sick-leave. Using individual panel data, the absence rates of these individuals are compared to the absence rates of individuals at establishments with no such program before, during and after the treatment periods. Overall, the bonus caused a sharp reduction in absenteeism, especially for women, highly educated individuals and part-time workers. Essay 3 (with Per-Anders Edin) provides evidence on discrimination in the hiring process. We use Internet data generated from a “policy experiment”, in which individuals can choose not to reveal their name and gender to potential employers. By comparing the “contact rate” of censored and non-censored women and minorities, we find that women have a 20 percent lower chance than men of getting contacted by employers and that this differential is fully explained by discrimination. Our results concerning ethnic discrimination are less conclusive, probably due to measurement errors.Essay 4 examines if and how the personnel at the Swedish Employment Office matter. The analysis shows that caseworkers explain a substantial part of future outcomes in terms of employment status and earnings, but have no significant effect on wages. Caseworkers that send their clients to classroom training or on-the-job training are less successful than caseworkers that provide basic job-search assistance. If caseworkers’ preferences in previous years towards treatments are uncorrelated with unobserved present working strategies, these estimates correspond to causal treatment effects.
|
|
| 15. |
- Magnusson, Lena, 1961-
(författare)
-
On the Nucleation and Inoculation of Metals
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Latent heat during recalesence and nucleation and post-recalesence temperature was analysed for refractory metals. An effect on latent heat was found by alloying the pure elements with other refractories. Latent heat was found to be 15-65% of tabulated values. Interface energy was evaluated from undercooling experiments. It was found that the dimensionless numbers β (σLs/ σLv) and α can be used to classify elements into distinctive groups and crystallographic structure. The phase diagrams for Al-Ti, Al-Ti-B and Al-Ti-C as well as inoculation were analysed. It was found that Al nucleates on Al3Ti which nucleates on TiB2. TiC was found to decompose into Al4C3 and Al3Ti. The inoculation of nodular cast iron with Mg, Ce; Ca and the formation of sulphides and oxides was analysed. The formation of new inclusions during the solidification as well as the formation of graphite is discussed.
|
|
| 16. |
- Nyberg, Peter, 1983-
(författare)
-
Evaluation, Transformation, and Extraction of Driving Cycles and Vehicle Operations
- 2013
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A driving cycle is a representation of how vehicles are driven and is usually represented by a set of data points of vehicle speed versus time. Driving cycles have been used to evaluate vehicles for a long time. A traditional usage of driving cycles have been in certification test procedures where the exhaust gas emissions from the vehicles need to comply with legislation. Driving cycles are now also used in product development for example to size components or to evaluate different technologies. Driving cycles can be just a repetition of measured data, be synthetically designed from engineering standpoints, be a statistically equivalent transformation of either of the two previous, or be obtained as an inverse problem e.g. obtaining driving/operation patterns. New methods that generate driving cycles and extract typical behavior from large amounts of operational data have recently been proposed. Other methods can be used for comparison of driving cycles, or to get realistic operations from measured data. This work addresses evaluation, transformation and extraction of driving cycles and vehicle operations. To be able to test a vehicle in a controlled environment, a chassis dynamometer is an option. When the vehicle is mounted, the chassis dynamometer simulates the road forces that the vehicle would experience if it would be driven on a real road. A moving base simulator is a well-established technique to evaluate driver perception of e.g. the powertrain in a vehicle, and by connecting these two simulators the fidelity can be enhanced in the moving base simulator and at the same time the mounted vehicle in the chassis dynamometer is experiencing more realistic loads. This is due to the driver's perception in the moving base simulator is close to reality. If only a driving cycle is considered in the optimization of a controller there is a risk that the controllers of vehicles are tailored to perform well in that specific driving cycle and not during real-world driving. To avoid the sub-optimization issues, the operating regions of the engine need to be excited differently. This can be attained by using a novel algorithm, which is proposed in this thesis, that alters the driving cycle while maintaining that the driving cycle tests vehicles in a similar way. This is achieved by keeping the mean tractive force constant during the process. From a manufacturers standpoint it is vital to understand how your vehicles are being used by the customers. Knowledge about the usage can be used for design of driving cycles, component sizing and configuration, during the product development process, and in control algorithms. To get a clearer picture of the usage of wheel loaders, a novel algorithm that automatically, using existing sensors only, extracts information of the customers usage, is suggested. The approach is found to be robust when evaluated on measured data from wheel loaders loading gravel and shot rock.
|
|
| 17. |
- Söderström, Martin, 1975-
(författare)
-
Evaluating Institutional Changes in Education and Wage Policy
- 2006
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay I (written with Roope Uusitalo) studies the effects of school choice on segregation. We analyse a reform in Stockholm that changed the admission system of public upper secondary schools. Before 2000, students were assigned to their nearest school, but from the fall of 2000, students can apply to any school, and admission is based on grades only. The distribution of students over schools changed dramatically as a response to extending school choice. As expected, segregation by ability increased. However, segregation by family background, as well as, segregation between immigrants and natives also increased significantly. Furthermore, the increase in segregation between immigrants and natives is not explained by differences in prior achievement.Essay II studies the effects of school choice on student achievement by analysing the Stockholm admission reform. Since all schools became open for application from anyone, and funding follows the students, the reform imposed strong incentives for school competition. It is shown that the reform has contributed to increase the between school variance in student outcomes. More importantly, the results indicate that students in Stockholm perform no better with increased choice availability. Essay III evaluates the introduction of individual wage bargaining for Swedish teachers. A centralized bargaining structure with wage scales was in 1996 replaced by a decentralized one, where teachers now negotiate their own wages. This paper investigates whether this system was a binding constraint, by studying the earnings structure of teachers during the 1990s. The results indicate reform effects, most pronounced for compulsory school teachers; both the age profile of earnings and earnings dispersion shifted. Furthermore, there are no indications that the returns to education and certification increase after the reform.Essay IV (written with Peter Fredriksson) examines the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployment using Swedish regional data. To estimate the effect of an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment we exploit the fact the generosity of UI varies regionally because there is a ceiling on benefits. The actual generosity of UI varies within region over time due to, e.g., differences in expected regional wage growth and variations in the benefit ceiling. We find that the actual generosity of UI does matter for regional unemployment. Increases in the actual replacement rate contribute to higher unemployment. We also show that removing the wage cap in UI benefit receipt would reduce the dispersion of regional unemployment.
|
|
