Umeå University's logo

This thesis answer the two main questions, firstly, the role of technological development in the production of RE with special reference to investment subsidy in supporting schemes and research and development (R&D). Investment subsidies in supporting schemes and R&D are widely used to promote RE technology and considered economical, efficient instruments than regulation approach. Secondly, the study investigates the relationship between the production of RE and the economic development. Panel data for twelve European Union (EU) countries are analysed for the period 1990 to 2013. The study uses a Cobb Douglas production function to estimate the EU's rational behaviour of investment subsidy between supporting schemes and R&D. For the estimation techniques, the study uses the unit root test, cointegration test, and dynamic pooling average group (PMG) model. The selection of the PMG model is based on the results of diagnostic tests, i.e. cross-sectional dependence, heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, and Hausman. Furthermore, the cointegration test confirms that in the long-run all the variables move together to achieve equilibrium. The PMG model confirms the effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable. Thus, it is concluded that the investment subsidies in supporting schemes have a positive and significant effect on the production of renewable energy in the long-run. However, the investment subsidy in research and development also has a positive but insignificant effect on the production of renewable energy in the long-run. Based on the long-run result, thus the study suggests that it is more rational to invest subsidy in supporting schemes than in R&D. In order to find the relationship between the production of RE and economic development, the result of the study confirms that economic development has a positive and significant impact on the production of renewable energy both in the short-and long-run. In addition, the test of the causality confirms the bidirectional relationship between production of RE and economic development. The bidirectional relationship states that both energy and economic growth are associated and complement each other.

There is a rich empirical literature testing whether per capita carbon dioxide emissions tend to converge over time and across countries. This article provides a meta-analysis of the results from this research, and discusses how carbon emissions convergence may be understood in, for instance, the presence of international knowledge spillovers and policy convergence. The results display evidence of either divergence or persistent gaps at the global level, but convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions between richer industrialized countries. However, the results appear sensitive to the choice of data sample and choice of convergence concept, e.g. stochastic convergence versus β-convergence. Moreover, peer-reviewed studies have a higher likelihood of reporting convergence in carbon dioxide emissions compared to non-refereed work.

This article examines the impact of establishing a large industrial manufacturing entity on employment and the labor market in a remote, sparsely populated part of Sweden, focusing on how it affects total regional employment because industrial policies aiming to attract investment and reignite employment in stagnating regions have been a central policy tool. The empirical analysis is based on the synthetic control method, which enables the estimation of place-specific causal effects. Using aggregated microdata from 1995 to 2019, the results indicate that employment in the treated region, as compared to synthetic regions, has been negatively affected by the manufacturing establishment. However, the short- and long-term effects differ across different labor market segments (same, related, and unrelated industries) and according to firm size. Overall, the findings suggest that large manufacturing investment does not necessarily have a positive or instantaneous impact on total regional employment. It does, however, provide some potential for long-term diversification because employment in related activities grows in the long run.

Stock returns in emerging market economies exhibit patterns that are distinctively different from developed countries: returns are noted to be highly volatile and autocorrelated, and long horizon returns are predictable. While these stylized facts are well established, the assumption underlying the distribution of returns is less understood. In particular, the empirical literature continues to rely on the normality assumption as a starting point, and most asset pricing models tend to overstretch this point. This paper questions the rationale behind this supposition and proceeds to test more formally for normality using multivariate joint test for skewness and kurtosis. Additionally, the paper extends the literature by examining a number of empirical regularities for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS for short). Our main findings are that the distributionof stock returns for the BRICS exhibits peakedness with fatter and longer tails, and this is invariant to both the unit of measurement and the time horizon of returns. Volatility clustering is prevalent in all markets, and this decays exponentially for all but Brazil. The relationship between risk and return is found to be significant and risk premiums are prevalent in our sample.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between GDP per capitaand carbon dioxide emission per capita in Ethiopia from 1981 to 2020. All the variables in thispaper are stationary in their difference. Johansen cointegration is chosen over the Engel-Granger approach due to the presence of two cointegration equations. The result from thevector error correction model implies the existence of a short and long-run relationship betweenthe carbon dioxide emission per capita, gross domestic product per capita, and trade openness.In the long run, the Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is valid in this study.

The rise of youth unemployment in Sweden has highlighted the need for more research investigating the effects of unemployment on future earnings. Earlier research suggests that youth unemployment will leave labor market scares on a person’s future income. Therefore, in this thesis I investigate the question if migration can increase an individual’s future earnings and hence work as a cure for scared individuals. My theoretical argument is that migration is an investment in human capital which will lead to higher future income and may heal scars. To test my argument, I use Swedish panel data from the ASTRID database, examining unemployed individuals born 1979-1983 after finishing their education in Sweden. A nearest-neighbor propensity score matching method is applied to estimate the casual effects. However, the results show only few significant results over time and age cohorts in the data. Therefore, my conclusion is that migration barley increases income of young unemployed individuals.

Denna studie avser analysera hur hälsan i den svenska befolkningen varierar med konjunkturcykeln. Relationen mellan hälsa och konjunkturcykeln studeras genom att undersöka hur mortalitet och utnyttjandet av sjukvård påverkas av förändringar i arbetslöshet. Relationen mellan mortalitet och arbetslöshet är välstuderad utomlands och i Sverige men denna studie tar analysen ett steg vidare genom att även använda utnyttjandet av sluten respektive öppen vård som mått på hälsa. Den ekonometriska metoden som tillämpats är regression med fixa effekter som estimerats med paneldata som avser Sveriges 21 län. Överlag kan resultaten i denna studie inte visa på ett tydligt samband mellan arbetslöshet och de studerade hälsovariablerna. Med viss försiktighet i tolkningarna kan resultaten visa tecken på att en ökad arbetslöshet leder till lägre mortalitet och högre sjukvårdsutnyttjande momentant. Den dynamiska analysen i studien visar tecken på att arbetslöshet har en större effekt på mortalitet ett och två år senare, liknande resultat finns i relationen mellan arbetslöshet och utnyttjandet av öppen vård. Utnyttjandet av sluten vård ökar momentant men effekten av stigande arbetslöshet minskar efter ett och två år.

Denna studie utvärderar ekonomiska styrmedels effekt på konsumtionen av livsmedel samt ifall skatter och subventioner kan vara en metod som styr matkonsumtionen mot hälsosamma livsmedelsval. Sex livsmedelsgrupper analyseras i studien och dessa är sötsaker och glass, kött, grönsaker, mejerivaror, bröd och spannmålsprodukter samt frukt och bär. Fyra scenarier som representerar olika skatte- och/eller subventionsreformer simuleras för att analysera vilken effekt ekonomiska styrmedel kan ha på matkonsumtion och hälsa. Responsen som de ekonomiska styrmedlen har på matkonsumtionen beräknas med elasticiteter som tagits fram från parameterestimat i AIDS-modellen. Den data som ligger till grund för den ekonometriska modellen är aggregerad konsumtionsdata, konsumentprisindex och livsmedelsförsäljning. Resultatet från studien visar att det går att styra konsumtionen av livsmedel men att substitution mellan varor kan leda till att de hälsomål som reformen är menad att nå inte uppfylls.

This study examines the dynamic relationship between house prices, disposable income, lending rate to households, housing supply and population in the three Swedish metropolitan areas of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, using a vector error correction model (vecm). The study uses quarterly data for the Swedish economy and applies the vecm methodology in revealing this dynamic relationship from 2000 – 2022. Statistically significant relationships reveal dependencies among these variables; such as the positive relationship between house prices in previous periods and current periods. There are other unprecedented results which would require a deeper-dive to reveal any structural distortions that may exist in the Swedish housing market; such as the negative relationship between past values of housing supply and disposable income in Stockholm. Lending Rate across the 3 metropolitan areas shows the relatively fastest long-run adjustment.

This study utilizes a dynamic fixed effects regression to examine the relationship between per capita gross domestic Product (GDP) and per capita healthcare expenditure (HCE) in 21 OECD countries for the period 1983-2022. The model employed, produces income elasticity estimates for the short-run and long-run, that are between 0 and 1; thereby providing an indication of a positive but less than unitary response of HCE to changes in the level of GDP. Robustness checks and an alternative static model are introduced to give a well-rounded analysis.

Studying and identifying the impact of the macroeconomic news on the uncertainty, measured by the implied volatility index behavior in the European financial market, is the main goal of this study. The macroeconomic variables are regarded in this study are consumer price index CPI, the gross domestic product GDP, employment reports EMP, monetary policy MP, labor cost LC, and the current account for the Eurozone CA. In this study, I employ various statistical approaches to understand to what extent the uncertainty is resolved due to the macroeconomic news, namely, dummy OLS regression, GARCH (1,1), GARCH-M (1,1), and EGARCH (1,1). The reported findings uncover that only the monetary policy has a significant impact on the implied volatility index, thus, the uncertainty associated with this indicator is resolved during the announcement days. The results confirm also that the investors in the Eurozone financial market consider more than one macroeconomic variable as the viable source for the information, as the joint effect for each of CPI, GDP, LC, and MP is statically different from zero. Further, the uncertainty significantly increases prior to the CPI announcements and resolved during MP announcements.

För att få bukt med lågkonjunkturen efter finanskrisen 2008 förde Sverige en expansiv penningpolitik. Även om Sverige tog sig ur krisen relativt smärtfritt följdes det av en period med deflation. Det ledde till att reporäntan 2015 för första gången sänktes under nollgränsen, och därmed tog den svenska penningpolitiken ett historiskt steg för att nå inflationsmålet. De låga räntorna har lett till att priserna på bostadsmarknaden har skenat iväg och de svenska hushållens skulder har ökat avsevärt där den genomsnittliga skuldkvoten är uppe i 343 procent. Från de penningpolitiska protokollen uttrycker Riksbanken en stor oro för denna utveckling och föreslår riktade åtgärder i bostads-, och skattepolitiken. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka effekterna av penningpolitiska åtgärder samt utvecklingen av bostadspriserna har haft på de svenska hushållen skulder.

Genom en VAR-modell, Granger-orsakssamband, Impulse-response test och stresstester har denna studie kunnat påvisa och kartlägga vad som händer med de svenska hushållens skulder vid en eventuell räntehöjning. Resultaten visar att en räntechock mellan 3–5 procent minskar framtida skuldsättning, och ekonomin anpassar sig till jämvikt efter 5–8 perioder vilket representerar 15–24 månader. Den ger därmed ett starkt stöd för penningpolitikens kausalitet. Resultaten visar dessutom att det finns hushåll med låg disponibel inkomst som lever under existensminimum idag, och vid en räntehöjning överstiger några hushåll sitt existensminimum med nästan 50 procent.

Studiens teoretiska del ger en förklaring om penningpolitikens jobb och dess flöde till hushåll och företag. Den tar även upp tidigare forskning som har undersökt marknadsbeteende hos hushåll. 

This study tests whether if heuristics affect the decisions of an economic agent. Through different sets of lottery games conducted on students, the participants made choices between an uncertain asset and a risk-free asset. Instead of the classical approach, I chose to relate the uncertain asset to a financial asset and the risk-free asset to a cash payment placed in a savings account. The game contained a total of six rounds, where the participants made choices on different level of risk for the first three rounds. In the remaining three rounds the participants made choices on the same level of risk do distinguish if past experience affected their risk preference. The experimental results show that when the risk environment change, participants in the low risk environment became more risk averse, as oppose to participants in the high risk environment. The results also show that when exposed to avolatile environment, participants tend to switch to the safe option earlier compared to when stakes are low. However, when the participants made choices on the same level of risk, the switch from the lottery to the safe option did not differ between the participants. In other words, past experience did not seem to aect the valuation of the asset. In this experiment, women tend to be more risk averse than men. On average, women switched to the safe option earlier than the men.

What if you could separate your salary from work, what would happen? How would individuals in a society react? Would they invest more in human capital, would they work halftime or at all? These are questions that follows if Universal Basic Income (UBI) would be implemented. What is Universal Basic Income? UBI is a suggestion of a welfare system where every month the state gives its citizens a sum of money without conditions. The idea is old but has resurfaced lately due to the fear that automation is destroying jobs in a faster rate than new jobs can be created. But Sweden also faces other challenges. After the crisis in Syria, Germany and Sweden were the two European countries who took in the most refugees which will contribute to the rising gap of unemployment between natives and people who are born outside of the country. Research done by Försäkringskassan, a public institute in Sweden shows that people who end up in long term illness has increased over time, and the prediction is that more people are heading towards that direction. With these challenges, the potential of UBI was interesting to examine.

With an DSGE-model, the behaviour of the agents in the economy was simulated in a closed economy. The results showed that the UBI grew the sectors size compared to the baseline model without the UBI. Households of various skills increased their purchsing power with UBI compared to households without UBI. The simulations also showed that the price that the firms had to pay to compensate workers for labour increased with UBI, indicating that UBI is possibly inflationary. The simulations were compared with two surveys about the attitudes towards UBI and the labour market. Some of the answers about labour hours were in line with the simulations, while others were not. The majority of the respondents answered that UBI would not affect their labour hours, indicating that the model with rational expectations does a poor job of catching attitudes, because agents don’t always act rational. It could also depend on that most of the respondents are highly educated and have different preferences compared with other individuals who have lower skills. An improvement of the study is firstly to include a central bank as an additional agent to capture the effects of monetary policy and inflation, secondly open up the economy to capture the effects of trade.

Innevarande studie syftar till att utreda nationalekonomisk nyttoforskning med anknytning till sociala medier. Sociala medier ger upphov till en mängd intressant forskning. Lin & Lu (2011) visar att individer som använder sociala medier känner uppskattning och glädje vid interaktioner på sociala medier. Det är roligt och förnöjsamt att vara medlem i ett socialt digitalt nätverk när bekanta bidrar till en positiv stämning. Ellison & Steinfield (2007) visar hur Facebookanvändare har större socialt kapital än icke-användarna – de har kontakt med fler människor. Användandet av sociala medier verkar bidra till att individer bibehåller kontakt med människor de annars hade tappat kontakten med. Fördelen med ökat socialt kapital kan förklaras med att man får tillgång till mer information. Ökat inflöde av information visar Granovetter (2005) är relevant för individens beslutförfattande, personer med mer socialt kapital tar bättre beslut – de ångrar inte besluten i efterhand. Användandet av sociala medier bidrar till nyttofulla saker men som med mycket annat när saker går till överdrift har dem en tendens till att börja påverka en individ negativt. Fischer (1999) visar hur människor gärna nyttomaximerar under restriktionen av den tid varje dygn erbjuder. Det är alltså ett bra val att göra saker vi tycker är roligt då får vi större nytta i livet. Men i samklang med att individer gärna njuter av fritid där vi exempelvis spenderar tid på sociala medier så kan ett fysiskt beroende utveckla sig. Olds & Milner (1954) förklarar hur hjärnan bildar receptorer för lyckohormonet dopamin som vi får ta del utav vid positiva interaktioner på sociala medier. Detta lägger grund för att individen misslyckas med att nyttomaximera och istället spenderar allt för stor del av sitt dygn på sociala medier.

Effekterna av det visar Hinsch & Sheldon (2013) - människor som själva uppfattar att de använder för sociala medier för mycket blir mer välmående när de drar ner på användandet. Dessa personer har också lättare för att dra ner på timmarna spenderade framför skärmen. Vittnandes om att det finns en viss nivå av användande som verkar leda till bra saker. Ellison & Steinfield ser exempelvis ingen skillnad på antal kontakter man har band till även om man spenderar 2-4h/dag framför Facebook jämfört med 0-2h. Livet för de flesta har många olika element som alla bidrar med viss nytta – positiv eller negativ. Att arbeta mot mål är bra för den personliga nyttan i livet säger Klug & Maier (2015). Att prokrastinera och välja fritid när man istället bör arbeta emot att slutföra mål är inte nyttofullt menar Fischer (1999). Sammantaget har användandet av sociala medier många bra effekter för individen – med premissen att samma individ kan begränsa sitt användande till en nivå som inte medför att för lite tid disponeras till att arbeta med övergripande mål i livet.

Paper [I] Energy efficiency improvement (EEI) benefits the climate and matters for energy security. The potential emission and energy savings due to EEI may however not fully materialize due to the rebound effect. In this study, we measure the size of the rebound effect for fuel and electricity within the four most energy intensive sectors in Sweden: Pulp and paper, Basic iron and steel, Chemical, and Mining. We use a detailed firm-level panel data set for 2000–2008 and apply a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) for measuring the rebound effect. We find that neither fuel nor electricity rebound effects fully offset the potential energy and emission savings. Among the determinants, we find the CO2 intensity and the fuel/electricity shares to be useful indicators for identifying firms with higher or lower rebound effects within each sector.

Paper [II] Energy efficiency improvement (EEI) is generally known to be a cost-effective measure for meeting energy, climate and sustainable growth targets. Unfortunately, behavioral responses to such improvements (called energy rebound effects) may reduce the expected savings in emissions and energy from EEI. Hence, the size of this effect should be considered to help set realistic energy and climate targets. Currently there are significant differences in approaches for measuring rebound effect. Here, we used a two-step procedure to measure both short- and long-term energy rebound effects in the Swedish manufacturing industry. In the first step, we used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to obtain energy efficiency scores. In the second step, we estimated energy rebound effects using a dynamic panel regression model. This approach was applied to a firm-level panel dataset covering all 14 sectors in the Swedish manufacturing industry over the period 1997–2008. We showed that, in the short run, partial rebound effects exist within most of manufacturing sectors, meaning that the rebound effect decreased, but did not totally offset, the energy and emission savings expected from EEI. The long-term rebound effect was smaller than the short-term effect, implying that within each sector, energy and emission savings due to EEI are larger in the long run compared to the short run.

Paper [III] Energy inefficiency in production implies that the same level of goods and services could be produced using less energy. The potential energy inefficiency of a firm may be linked to long-term structural rigidities in the production process and/or systematic shortcomings in management (persistent inefficiency), or associated with temporary issues like misallocation of resources (transient inefficiency). Eliminating or mitigating different inefficiencies may require different policy measures. Studies measuring industrial energy inefficiency have mostly focused on overall inefficiencies and have paid little attention to distinctions between the types. The aim of this study was to assess whether energy inefficiency is transient and/or persistent in the Swedish manufacturing industry. I used a firm-level panel dataset covering fourteen industrial sectors from 1997–2008 and estimated a stochastic energy demand frontier model. The model included a four-component error term separating persistent and transient inefficiency from unobserved heterogeneity and random noise. I found that both transient and persistent energy inefficiencies exist in most sectors of the Swedish manufacturing industry. Overall, persistent energy inefficiency was larger than transient, but varied considerably in different manufacturing sectors. The results suggest that, generally, energy inefficiencies in the Swedish manufacturing industry were related to structural rigidities connected to technology and/or management practices.

Paper [IV] The aim of this paper was to investigate whether the environment and employment compete with each other in Swedish manufacturing industry. The effect of a marginal increase in environmental expenditure and environmental investment costs on sector-level demand for labor (employment) was studied using a detailed firm-level panel dataset for the period 2001–2008. The results showed that the sign and magnitude of the net employment effects ultimately depend on the aggregate sector-level output demand elasticity. If the output demand is inelastic, these costs induce small net improvements in employment, while a more elastic output demand suggests negative, but in most sectors relatively small, net effects on demand for labor. Hence, the results did not generally indicate a substantial trade-off between jobs and the environment. The general policy recommendation that can be drawn from this study is that, in the absence of empirically estimated output demand elasticities, a careful attitude regarding national environmental initiatives for sectors exposed to world market competition should be adopted.

Energy efficiency improvement (EEI) benefits the climate and matters for energy security. The potential emission and energy savings due to EEI may however not fully materialize due to the rebound effect. In this study, we measure the size of the rebound effect for fuel and electricity within the four most energy intensive sectors in Sweden: pulp and paper, basic iron and steel, chemical, and mining. We use a detailed firm-level panel data set for 2000–2008 and apply Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) for measuring the rebound effect. We find that neither fuel nor electricity rebound effects fully offset the potential energy and emission savings. Among the determinants, we find CO2 intensity and fuel/electricity share to be useful indicators for identifying firms with higher or lower rebound effect within each sector.

Denna studie undersöker hur etableringen av digitala vårdcentraler påverkar efterfrågan på fysisk primärvård i Sverige, samt vilka faktorer som bidrar till att individer uppsöker digital vård. Detta med syfte att kunna utveckla och anpassa den digitala vården till att fungera som ett hjälpmedel för den fysiska vården. Under studieperioden har KRY och Min Doktor varit de största aktörerna inom digital vård i Sverige och inkluderas således i studien. Sedermera omfattar studien 12 av Sveriges regioner med tillhörande kommuner under perioden 2014–2018, motsvarande 111 kommuner. Med utgångspunkt från ekonomisk teori och tidigare forskning har en modell om efterfrågan på sjukvård utformats och ligger till grund för undersökningen. Studien innefattar paneldata som estimeras med hjälp av en Random effects-modell. Variablerna som används har hämtats från Statistiska Centralbyrån (SCB), Sveriges Kommuner- och Regioner (SKR) samt Region Jönköping.

Resultatet visar ett negativt samband mellan efterfrågan på fysisk läkarvård och användning av digital vård, sambandet är statistiskt signifikant. Detta indikerar att det finns en form av substituerbarhet och möjligheten finns att digital vård kan underlätta den fysiska primärvården till en viss del. Vidare visas att en högre inkomst, andelen ungdomar i populationen samt andelen kvinnor i populationen är attribut som bidrar till en ökad användning av digital vård. Avslutningsvis tyder resultatet på att användningen av digita lvård minskar vid högre status av ohälsa samt när tillgängligheten i den fysiska primärvården ökar.

Slutsatsen av studien är att digitalisering i form av digitala vårdcentraler kan hjälpa till att avlasta den fysiska primärvården. Givet att digitala vårdcentraler hanteras och regleras på ett adekvat sätt finns det stora möjligheter att ta fördel av digitalisering inom vårdsektorn och uppnå en mer disponibel primärvårdsmarknad

This thesis consists of four self-contained papers on job turnover, productivity and state- local finance.

Paper [I] deals with the determinants of the rate of job turnover defined as the change in distribution of employment between and within industries in Swedish manufacturing. The rate of inter-industry job turnover is driven by the dispersion of profit changes among industries. Shifts in international competitiveness among industries seem to play a central role in the explanation of this pattern. The rate of intra-industry job turnover has been higher in industries with many small plants, low profit margins and high import penetration.

Paper [II] analyzes the impact of openness on total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Using Swedish industry level data the results show that economically integrated industries tend to be more engaged in research and development (R&D) and have more entry and exit activity than other industries. The domestic R&D intensity does not contribute to the TFP growth rate. Instead, the results imply that openness to international markets, which helps facilitate technology spillovers, has a significant impact on the growth rate. There is also some evidence suggesting that producers exiting the market are less productive, implying that such exits will increase the average productivity of the industry concerned.

The purpose of Paper [III] is to design and implement a test of whether the external effect from tax base sharing among local and regional governments is internalized via the intergovernmental transfer system. The test is based on the observation that if the external effect is internalized, an increase in the income tax rate at one level of government will induce the other level to reduce its income tax rate by the corresponding amount, leaving the effective tax rate unchanged. By using panel data for the Swedish local and regional public sectors, we estimate the reaction function for the local income tax rate. The results imply that an increase in the regional income tax rate induces the municipalities in the region to decrease their income tax rates. In addition, we are able to reject the null hypothesis that the external effect from tax base sharing is internalized.

Paper [IV] concerns risk-sharing, in terms of how the central government smooths personal income among municipalities via the tax and transfer systems. Using Swedish panel data, the results show that the national tax and transfer systems mitigate an adverse shock to income of one krona so that disposable income falls by 67 öre, on average. However, there are large differences across regions, where the effect on disposable income varies between 32 and 78 öre in the krona.

Forests are assumed to play a significant role in relation to climate change mitigation. However, previous studies show that actor groups' perspectives vary regarding how to best utilize forests. This paper focuses on exploring frames in recent Swedish forest- and climate politics and to what extent they may form the basis for conflict resolution or contribute to perpetuate conflicts among actors. The analysis of recent forest- and climate policies, and actor groups' positioning on the issues, builds upon the pathways to sustainability approach in combination with frame analysis. The results showed that ideas based on “Ecological Modernisation” dominated within the forest-climate nexus, but also a clear presence of alternative frames promoting “Sustainable Development”. As a result, conflicting frames were identified within the policies on how to reach policy targets - stressing both the importance of consensus and neutral dialogue with actors, while concurrently prioritizing an economic perspective.

The renewable energy sector has seen substantial growth in recent years, presenting not only a critical shift towards sustainable development but also encouraging individuals to invest in accordance with ethical and environmental considerations with the potential for financial returns. Along with these opportunities comes the challenges in selecting high-yield stocks, a task which for many can be both intimidating and unrewarding as it requires knowledge, time, and dedication. While there are thousands of investment strategies, few are publicly available in the renewable energy sector, thus leaving a gap in research. The purpose of this paper is to develop a method which simplifies the process of selecting high yield renewable energy stocks on the global stock market. Drawing inspiration from Joel Greenblatt’s magic formula and implementing panel data regression based on 10 stocks from 2007-2023, return on asset and revenue growth were shown to be statistically significant. A portfolio of 6 stocks was created based on a subset of 35 stocks in the renewable energy sector from 2018-03-27 to 2023-03-27. At an annual basis the portfolio was rebalanced based on highest return on asset and revenue growth. The portfolio outperformed the market index for global clean energy and the top-performing clean energy exchange-traded fund but did not generate any excess return.

This paper studies the association between waiting times for different health care services and the duration of sick leave, using a Swedish register database supplemented with information from questionnaires for 3,653 employees. The duration of sick leave is positively associated with waiting two weeks or more for primary care, technical investigations and specialists, compared to waiting one week or less. Except for waiting for a specialist, there is no indication that waiting four weeks or more is associated with longer durations of sick leave than waiting two to three weeks. Long waiting times for surgery is negatively associated with the duration of sick leave, which might be explained by prioritizing where patients with longer waiting times are those with less severe conditions. Including these waiting time variables did not induce substantial changes on the impact of traditional labor supply variables, which suggests that the parameter estimates of traditional variables are relatively robust.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the 2008 financial crisis had any impact on the total pay gap between men and women in the United States. Using micro data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 2006 and 2014, new empirical evidence is provided of how wage differences develop during a time of recession. The total gender wage gap, which is an indication of economic inequality, is divided into a declared and an unexplained part. It explains sharing controls for the relevant attributes of the labor market that vary between individuals, for example, work experience and education. The unexplained part of the total wage gap is the one that indicates the function of discrimination. With the help of Mincer's wage equation and Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition, the explained and unexplained wage gap for the two reference groups, men and women, is analyzed. The result showed that the total salary gap has decreased after the financial crisis, but that the unexplained portion has increased.

Since the 1980s, economists have used Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models for financial time series forecasting, for their simplicity and causal interpretability.This thesis investigates the performance of VAR models enhanced with ridge and lasso regularization methods for predicting cryptocurrency prices, focusing on high-frequency data. The study compares traditional VAR models with their regularized counterparts, VARX-Lasso and VARX-Ridge, in forecasting returns in volatile and speculative cryptocurrency markets. The empirical analysis is conducted using Bitcoin and a selection of other cryptocurrencies, exploring the impact of these regularization techniques on prediction accuracy. This research contributes to the limited literature on high-frequency cryptocurrency forecasting, offering insights into the dynamic relationships between crypto assets.

This study investigates audit team stress, its triggers and consequences to provide qualitative evidence about what audit team stress is and how its triggers and consequences can influence team stress and audit quality. Audit teams in three different audit firms, including different audit team ranks, discussed team stress experiences from one specific engagement during group and individual interviews. Audit work can be stressful, and its consequences can threaten audit quality. Additionally, shared team stress differs from individual personal stress. This research discusses how audit team stress, its triggers and consequences can occur at an interteam stress level, when all team members experience the same stress, and at an intrateam stress level, when individuals feel stress from a team experience. Contributions are made to audit literature and practitioners about audit experiences at a team level and its influence on audit quality, including new insights about time budget pressures and auditor affect.

This paper concerns welfare measurement in the presence of distortionary taxes. One purpose is to explain why the traditional green NNP measure fails as a welfare indicator when distortionary taxes are present. Another is to derive a green NNP analogue in a second best environment. In the second best optimum, the efficiency cost of taxation will affect both the form of the national welfare measure and the proper principles of accounting for pollution.

We integrate social exclusion, operationalized in terms of long-term unemployment, into the theory of optimal redistributive taxation. Our results show how an optimal mix of education policy, public employment, and support to the unemployed, in conjunction with optimal income taxation, contributes to redistribution and reduced long-term unemployment. The second-best optimum most likely implies overprovision of education relative to a policy rule that balances the direct marginal benefit and marginal cost, whereas public employment and unemployment benefits are underprovided. Our calibration shows how the policy mix varies with the government’s preferences for redistribution and the characteristics of those risking long-term unemployment.

This paper analyses how market shares for brand name drugs are affected by generic competition. The analysis is based on micro data for twelve different original drugs, which are all subject to generic competition. For five of these drugs, we find that the price of the original relative to the average price of the generic substitutes significantly affects the market share of the original drug. In addition, the introduction of a so called "reference price" system appears to have had a significant impact on the market shares of five original drugs.

In this paper, we consider how the hours of work and retirement age ought to respond to a change in the uncertainty of the length of life. The results show that a decrease in the standard deviation of life-length leads to an increase in the socially optimal retirement age and a decrease in the hours of work per period spent working, if the preferences for the number of years spent in retirement are characterized by constant or decreasing absolute risk version. We also show how a benevolent policy maker can implement the social optimum through an actuarially fair pension policy.

In this paper, we consider how the hours of work and retirement age ought to respond to a change in the uncertainty of the length of life. In a first best framework, where a benevolent government exercises perfect control over the individuals' labor supply and retirement-decisions, the results show that a decrease in the standard deviation of life-length leads to an increase in the optimal retirement age and a decrease in the hours of work per period spent working. This result is robust, and is also derived in models of decentralized decision-making where individuals decide on their own consumption, labor supply, and retirement age, and where the government attempts to affect their behavior and welfare through redistribution and pension policy.

This study derives and estimates models for the work travel time of each spouse in the household conditional on both spouses' hours of work. The model is estimated using Swedish household data. The own labour supply has a positive impact on travel time for females and a negative one for males. The estimated effects of the other spouse's labour supply are insignificant. An overall test of whether the hours of work are weakly separable from work travel time indicates that this hypothesis cannot be rejected for males but can be rejected for females.

An estimation of labour supply is modelled using the theory of urban household behaviour. The major purpose is to test the (implicit) assumption in previous labour supply studies that work travel and housing consumption are weakly separable from the hours of work. The results, which are obtained using Swedish data, imply that the hypothesis of weak separability is clearly rejected. We also find that the choice of location affects policy-relevant conclusions about the labour supply behaviour.

Following the 1987 report by The World Commission on Environment and Development, the genuine saving has come to play a key role in the context of sustainable development, and the World Bank regularly publishes numbers for genuine saving on a national basis. However, these numbers are typically calculated as if the tax system is non-distortionary. This paper presents an analogue to genuine saving in a second best economy, where the government raises revenue by means of distortionary taxation. We show how the social cost of public debt, which depends on the marginal excess burden, ought to be reflected in the genuine saving. By presenting calculations for Greece, Japan, Portugal, U.K., U.S. and OECD average, we also show that the numbers published by the World Bank are likely to be biased and may even give incorrect information as to whether the economy is locally sustainable.

Based on an endogenous growth model, this paper characterizes the conditions under which positional preferences do not give rise to intertemporal distortions as well as derives an optimal tax policy response in cases where these conditions are not satisfied. In our model, individuals can be positional both in terms of their consumption and wealth, the relative concerns partly reflect comparisons with people in other countries, and we distinguish between a (conventional) welfarist government and a paternalist government that does not respect positional preferences. We also extend the analysis to a multi-country framework and show that Nash-competition among local paternalist governments leads to a global social optimum, whereas Nash-competition among local welfarist governments does not.

In an endogenous growth model, we characterize the conditions under which positional preferences for consumption and wealth do not cause inefficiency and derive an optimal tax policy response in cases where these conditions are not satisfied. The concerns for relative consumption and relative wealth partly emanate from social comparisons with people in other countries. We distinguish between a (conventional) welfarist government and a non-welfarist government that does not attach any social value to relative concerns. We also compare the outcome of Nash-competition among local/national governments with the resource allocation implied by a global social optimum both under welfarism and non-welfarism.

This short paper analyzes whether a federal transfer system can be designed to increase welfare, when state governments create political budget cycles to increase the likelihood of reelection. The results show how the federal government may announce a transfer scheme in advance for the post-election year that counteracts the welfare costs of political budget cycles.

In this note, we analyze whether a federal transfer system can be designed to increase welfare when state governments create political budget cycles. The results show how the federal government can counteract the welfare costs of these cycles, without hindering politicians from signaling their type, by announcing a transfer scheme to subsidize expenditures that voters do not consider when voting.

This paper deals with optimal income taxation based on a household model, where men and women allocate their time between market work and household production, and where households differ depending on which spouse has the comparative advantage in market work. The purpose is to analyze the tax policy implications of gender norms represented by a market work norm for men and household work norm for women. We show how the optimal (corrective) tax policy depends on the definition of social norms, the preferences for obeying these norms, and whether men or women have the comparative advantage in market work. Two extreme results are that (i) corrective taxation should not be used at all if the norms are based on the mean value of market work and household work, respectively, given that all households have the same preferences, and (ii) only the majority household type should be taxed at the margin if the norms are instead based on the modal value.

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of a publicly provided private good with long-term consequences for individual well-being, in an economy where consumers have present-biased preferences due to quasihyperbolic discounting. The analysis is based on a two-type model with asymmetric information between the government and the private sector, and each consumer fives for three periods. We present formal conditions under which public provision to the young and the middle-aged generation, respectively, leads to higher welfare. Our results show that quasihyperbolic discounting provides a strong incentive for public provision to the young generation - especially if the consumers are naive (as opposed to sophisticated).

This paper analyzes the implications of social identity and self-categorization in the context of optimal redistributive income taxation. A two-type model is supplemented by an assumption that individuals select themselves into social categories, in which norms are formed and education effort choices partly depend on these norms. Optimal tax policy is analyzed under two different assumptions about the social objective function: a welfarist objective based on consumer preferences and a paternalist objective that does not reflect the consumer preference for social identity. We show how the welfarist government implements a tax policy to internalize the externalities arising from social norms, while the paternalist government uses tax policy to make individuals behave as if their preferences for social identity were absent.