| 1. |
- Stone, Trudy-Ann
(författare)
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Firms in Global Value Chains : An Analysis of the Determinants and Effects of the Changing Location of International Production
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis deals with the globalization of production, a salient feature of the modern economy. The development of international outsourcing as a widespread business practice and the simultaneous decrease in trade and transport costs have contributed to the growth of a phenomenon known as global value chains. The main aim of the thesis is to understand how global value chains alter the location of economic activity. The thesis also studies the extent of firms' participation in global value chains and its consequences for firm performance. The thesis consists of four papers studying the behavior of firms in global value chains. Paper 1 analyzes how production fragmentation influences the importing and exporting behavior of Swedish firms in the manufacturing sector. Paper 2 focuses on manufacturing firms in the ICT sector and analyzes the effect of global sourcing on firm performance. In Paper 3, the thesis examines deeper implications of global production by investigating whether exposure to trade raises firms' sensitivity to external shocks. The final paper in the thesis studies the location patterns of multinational firms and analyzes the effect of institutional distance on the number of multinational entries in developing countries. A number of patterns emerge from these studies. The first is that Swedish manufacturing firms increasingly participate in global value chains by sourcing production inputs from overseas to create products for local and foreign customers. As a result, global value chains help to alter the specialization patterns of manufacturing firms. The second finding is that firms reap benefits from global sourcing in the form of greater efficiency. However, global sourcing may also raise the responsiveness of firms to negative external shocks. The final key result points to a developing trend in the location of activity in which emerging market multinational firms are becoming significant sources of foreign direct investment flows and their investment patterns challenge existing theories of multinational location choice.
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| 2. |
- Bohman, Helena
(författare)
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Trade, Knowledge and Income Distribution
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four independent essays which address two main areas of research. The first area deals with the role of income distribution in economic transactions. The first paper in the thesis, Knowing me, Knowing you, suggests a new method of incorporating income distribution into international trade analysis. The method suggested provides a way to compare the distribution of income between two countries, and this is used to proxy demand similarities between the countries in question. The article Income Distribution and the diffusion of networks analyzes the impact of income distribution on the diffusion of fixed telecommunications in Brazil by showing how income distribution affects aggregate demand. The second line of research has to do with the impact of information on international trade. Insufficient information generates transaction costs, and in order to reduce costs it may be preferable to trade with known partners. The article Everybody knows? focuses on news flows as an explanatory variable in trade models. The determinants of news flows are estimated in a gravity model and subsequently in a structural equation model of international trade. The results suggest that information flow is an important determinant of international trade, but that traditional variables used in gravity models, such as income level and distance, also can be interpreted as taking information into account. Finally, the chapter Stranger in a strange land addresses the effects of international migration on explaining international trade patterns. The results reveal that immigration to Sweden has had a positive and robust effect on Swedish exports.
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| 3. |
- Mellander, Charlotta
(författare)
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The Wealth of Urban Regions : On the Location of Creative Individuals and Firms
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis consists of four individual chapters and an introduction to the thesis. The common feature of the four separate chapters is their focus on the location patterns of creative individuals and firms, the inter-relation between those actors and the regional development and how those actors in the end shape the wealth of urban regions.The first chapter deals with what happens after a new technology is introduced with a focus on the geographical location and distribution. The assumption is that new, non-standardized techniques frequently are initiated and promoted in large urban regions. In order to leave space for new activities, standardized and maturing techniques must gradually be moved to medium and small sized regions.The second chapter analyzes the occupational distribution within Swedish industries, on the basis of characteristics of the individuals they employ. This chapter focuses especially on how to best identify so-called creative industries. It also examines the location patterns of the different types of industries.The third chapter focuses on the role of different types of talent, as well as on factors that shape the distribution of talent across regions. A main theme is the role of universities, tolerance and service diversity. The chapter also examines the economic effect from those factors in combination with talent and technology.The last essay investigates the relationship between tolerance and openness on one hand, and regional housing values on the other. It argues that artists, bohemians and gays affect housing values through two kinds of mechanisms: an aesthetic-amenity premium and a tolerance or open culture premium.
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| 4. |
- Norman-Monroe, Therese, 1984-
(författare)
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Transport accessibility, wholesale trade and spatial development
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis comprises four independent papers, which all explore some aspect of the relationship between accessibility and spatial development. The central question I pose is how improved accessibility to transportation services, human capital, jobs, or the market contributes to the spatial variation in economic development. Empirical data and estimations are utilized in all chapters.The first paper (co-authored with Johan Klaesson) explores how a regional accessibility model can be used to analyze the growth of knowledge-intensive industries on a detailed geographical scale compared to a broader definition.In the second paper (co-authored with Maria Börjesson and Christer Anderstig), a refined accessibility measure is used to estimate the magnitude of the causal effect of transport system investments on the unemployment rate, and whether the effect differs for people with different levels of education.The third paper addresses the role that access to transportation services plays for wholesale start-ups, particularly in regions lacking in local demand.The analysis in paper number four covers the same time period as the advancement of the Internet, which greatly reduced transaction costs. The paper examines the importance of access to human capital for the spatial reorganization and growth of wholesale industries during this time period.
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| 5. |
- Warda, Peter
(författare)
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Knowledge, location, and trade
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how knowledge contained in traded goods influences firms’ demand for labor, and how knowledge-rich routines across space affect the innovative performance in firms and regions.Four research questions are presented that address how knowledge can travel in space. Each research question forms an individual paper in the thesis and can be read separately. The first part of the thesis gives a general introduction and outlines the theoretical background and motivation for the research questions examined in Papers 1 through 4.Papers 1 and 2 address how the knowledge composition of the labor force in Swedish manufacturing firms is impacted by changes in imported goods. Paper 1 analyzes imports of capital and intermediate goods and how their quality influences labor demand in different firm size categories. In Paper 2 the analysis is directed toward an examination of how offshoring of intermediate goods affects different occupations. The technology-specific content of the offshored intermediate goods is emphasized.Moreover, Papers 3 and 4 address how knowledge embodied in exported goods and codified knowledge in patents are affected by changes in new routines. Paper 3 analyzes how firms’ knowledge absorption capacity affects the development, adoption and introduction of new export products among Swedish manufacturing firms. Finally, the focus in Paper 4 is on innovations measured in terms of local patents production in European regions. In this paper, we analyze how the local patents production in a European region benefits both from local R&D inputs in its own region and from spillovers of R&D inputs in other European regions.
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| 6. |
- Ejermo, Olof
(författare)
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Perspectives on regional and industrial dynamics of innovation
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of five essays in the field of innovation economics, with an introductory chapter. The focus is mainly empirical with four of the five chapters consisting of studies of aspects of Swedish innovation activity. These empirical chapters are an endeavor to quantify aspects of the effects of the public-good property of knowledge. To this effect, innovation indicators were collected regarding industrial and firm research and development (R&D); regional indicators were collected using business and university R&D and records of patent applications and granted patents assigned to Swedish regions using the residential location of inventors.The first essay studies the productive effect (total factor productivity) of R&D on Swedish firms and the effect that R&D can be expected to have on other firms. The second essay analyzes, with corporate groups as the unit of observation, the effect of accessibility to R&D in universities, and in other groups’ R&D on the innovative capability of the individual group. The third essay tries to characterize the extent to which Swedish regions are specialized or diverse. This is summarized in a single variable which is used to test the effect on innovative activity as measured by the number of patent applications. The fourth essay, the theoretical study of the thesis, constructs a two-region model with two firms residing in each. The incentives for doing process R&D are worked out by agglomerating consumers in one of the regions, and by changing interregional accessibility. The sixth essay studies Swedish inventor networks and regional affinity based on networks.
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| 7. |
- Palmberg, Johanna, 1978-
(författare)
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Family Ownership and Investment Performance
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation provides an economic analysis of families as owners of large listed firms. The essential research question is whether family ownership provides an efficient form of governance. Family ownership and control is evaluated from different angles; how ownership, control, management, and board structure affects firm performance, and executive compensation.Chapter two “A Contractual Perspective of the Firm with an Application to the Maritime Industry” is a conceptual paper analyzing the contractual structure of a firm. The chapter conceptualizes the relations between firms, and markets, and gives a transaction cost perspective of why firms are organized the way they are.The third chapter “The Impact of Vote Differentiation on Investment Performance in Listed Family Firms” investigates ownership and control in Swedish family controlled firms. The analysis shows that family control is beneficial, but only if voting rights and cash-flow rights are aligned.The fourth chapter “Family Control and Executive Compensation” analyses whether families use remuneration as a way to expropriate minority shareholders. The study shows that managers in family-controlled firms have alower share of variable compensation than managers in non-family controlled firms. The analysis shows further that family control has a reducing effect on the total level of CEO-compensation.The last chapter “Board of Directors, Dependency, and Returns on Investment” investigates if there is a relationship between ownership structure, board of directors, and firm performance. The marginal q analysis indicate that firm dependent directors have a negative impact on firms’ investment performance. Owner-dependent and employee elected directors do not affect firm investment performance.To sum up, the empirical results show that family ownership and control affects remuneration in listed firms, and the firm investment performance. The analysis further shows that there are clear differences in the ownership and governance structure between family and non-family controlled firms.
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| 8. |
- Backman, Mikaela
(författare)
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Regions, Human Capital and New Firm Formation
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis shows the importance of human capital at the individual, firm, and regional level through its effects on returns to education, firm productivity and new firm formation. The thesis further shows the importance of banks as a determinant for new firm formation at the local level. The thesis comprises of five chapters, one introductory chapter followed by four independent chapters, empirical in their nature.The second chapter in the thesis, Regional Variations of Returns to Education, analyses individuals’ return to education in different regional contexts. The results show that returns to education differ according to type of location. Conclusively, the often-assumed hypothesis of equal returns to education for all regions in a country can be rejected. The second chapter, Human Capital and Firm Performance, uses a firm perspective and tests how human capital, within and outside the firm, influences firm productivity. Results show that both types of human capital are positively associated with firm productivity. Overall, it is firm attributes that explain most of the productivity variance. The third chapter, Accessibility to Human Capital and New Firm Formation, compares how human capital influences new firm formation in different regional categories. Overall, it is the access to human capital at the local and intra-regional level that increases the new firm formation rate. However, the influence from human capital differs across the regional categories and their position in the hierarchical system. The last chapter, Banks and New Firm Formation, analyses how different characteristics of the local bank sector influence new firm formation. The average size of bank branches per capita, independent banks, bank branches per capita and the competitive level are positively associated with local startups.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Nyström, Kristina
(författare)
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Entry and Exit in Swedish Industrial Sectors
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of five individual essays and an introductory chapter. The essays are all in the field of industrial dynamics and more specifically focus on firm entry and exit in Swedish industrial sectors. The essays mainly contribute to the empirical literature on entry and exit. In four of the five essays, panel data methods are used in the empirical investigation. The first essay presents the patterns of entry and exit in industrial sectors in Sweden and studies the importance of different determinants of entry and exit rates in industries. The second essay focuses on the relationship between entry and exit. The third essay has a regional perspective, focusing on regional determinants of entry and exit. It also investigates the importance of the differences in industry structure for differences in entry and exit rates across regions. The fourth chapter uses the theory of product life cycle to investigate how knowledge intensity differs in entering and exiting firms in different stages of the product life cycle. The fifth and last essay focuses on the importance of firm demography, in terms of firm size and age, for the decision to perform process R&D, product R&D or combine process with product R&D.
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