Since 1992, the Swedish government and more specifically the Swedish Transport Administration (STA), has subsidized unprofitable flights in the country. Most of these flights are to remote towns in the northern half of the country in which alternative methods of transport are limited, and it is therefore argued that these flights need to be subsidized in order to make these towns easily accessible and to continue being economically stable. The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether or not the Swedish government should continue subsidizing unprofitable flight routes, or if it should subsidize some of the routes or simply none of them. This was done with a so-called cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis comes to a conclusion that, likely, four out of the seven PSOs should be abolished, while three could possibly still be subsidized. However, since a cost-benefit analysis was used, it is difficult to test the result for statistical significance meaning the result is uncertain and open for discussion and future evaluation.

The Passive House as a type of energy-efficient and cost-efficiency housing, has been implemented widely around the world, and made great contribution to energy saving and environment protection. Although the Passive House requires higher investment in early stage compared to conventional houses, it has many benefits including improving indoor climate and saving energy consumption. However, the development of Passive House in China has been slow due to the lack of information regarding the extra investment and benefits. To provide a clear insight on how the extra investment and benefits of the Passive House balance each other, this study establishes an evaluation model to identify and calculate the additional costs through the life cycle of the Passive House. With the cost and benefit calculated, we can also analysis the payback period to see how many years it takes to recover the extra investment. After the model is established, we evaluated a representative Passive House in Hebei, China. The result showed that the benefits of the extra investment outweigh the additional costs, and the payback period is approximately 12 years, which is acceptable for housing projects. The evaluation model not only provides the developers and consumers a tool to understand the costs and benefits, but also illustrate the economic feasibility of Passive House in China. / Passivhuset som en typ av energieffektiva och kostnadseffektiva bostäder har implementerats i hela världen och har bidragit stort till energibesparing och miljöskydd. Även om Passive House kräver högre investeringar i ett tidigt skede jämfört med konventionella hus, har det många fördelar inklusive att förbättra inomhusklimatet och spara energiförbrukning. Utvecklingen av Passive House i Kina har dock varit långsam på grund av bristen på information om extra investeringar och fördelar. För att ge en tydlig insikt om hur de extra investeringarna och fördelarna med Passive House balanserar varandra skapar denna studie en utvärderingsmodell för att identifiera och beräkna extrakostnaderna genom passivhusets livscykel. Med beräknad kostnad och nytta kan vi också analysera återbetalningsperioden för att se hur många år det tar att återfå den extra investeringen. Efter att modellen har upprättats utvärderade vi ett representativt passivhus i Hebei, Kina. Resultatet visade att fördelarna med extrainvesteringar uppväger extrakostnaderna och återbetalningsperioden är cirka 12 år, vilket är acceptabelt för bostadsprojekt. Utvärderingsmodellen ger inte bara utvecklarna och konsumenterna ett verktyg för att förstå kostnaderna och fördelarna utan illustrerar också den ekonomiska genomförbarheten hos Passive House i Kina.

The development and expansion of cities has led to increased public awareness of the influence of building sustainability on the environment, society, and economy. Green building eases the pressure of urbanization by saving energy, reducing waste, protecting the environment, improving the living standard, and encouraging industry. Consequently, green building has developed rapidly for 20 years. This study reviews the literature on green building, recognizes the stakeholders’ motivations for and barriers to green building development, uses value network analysis, cost–benefit analysis, and case study method for understanding value creation, value sensing, value delivery, and value capturing mechanism of green building to augment the knowledge of green building development for both academics and practitioners. This study proposes an applicable analysis tool. / Business Administration/Finance

The construction of the new subway extension between Akalla and Barkarby is a project that is already contracted upon and will be completed in 2025. Current studies on this subway extension shows that it is not profitable from a socioeconomic viewpoint but still the project is continued with which makes it an interesting study area. The aim of this report is to research the costs and benefits of the Akalla-Barkarby subway extension to see if there are other aspects, not included in the previous study, that has an impact on the profitability of the case. The main focus of this study is on social impacts that have often been overlooked in similar studies and are hard to quantify. The study was done through using a cost-benefit analysis quantifying the areas of investment cost, operating expenses, travel time, travel cost, real estate value, congestion, barrier effects, accessibility to work opportunities, accessibility to services, exercise, air pollution and accidents. A discount rate of 3.5 % was used and a life length of 35 years. It was divided in three different scenarios based on how large part of the new travelers that are predicted to be shifting to car to using the new subway. Scenarios one and two shows a negative NPV whereas scenario three shows a positive NPV. A change of above 14.65 % would mean that the investment is net positive. This shows that the project has a large potential to be profitable and also shows that the impacts from the social benefits account for a large part of the project’s benefits, which means that other studies might be lacking benefits and turns out net negative by not including social aspects. / Utbyggnaden av tunnelbanan mellan Akalla och Barkarby är ett projekt som redan är på gång att byggas och tunnelbanan kommer att vara körbar från och med 2025. Tidigare studier på just den här tunnelbanesträckningen visar på att den inte är samhällsekonomiskt lönsam vilket enligt nationalekonomiska teorier visar på att projektet inte borde genomföras. Då dessa slags studier ofta har begränsningar i både tid, tillgängliga data och resurser så finns det områden som ofta bortses från. Ett av dessa områden är sociala aspekter som till exempel hälsoeffekter och påverkan på utanförskap och segregation som potentiellt kan ha stor påverkan på slutresultatet. Därför är syftet med denna studie att undersöka kostnaderna och nyttorna med den nya tunnelbanesträckningen mellan Akalla och Barkarby för att ge en djupare insikt i de kostnader och nyttor som uppstår, med fokus på sociala aspekter som ofta förbises. Studien är en kostnads-nyttoanalys. Första steget identifierade intressanta områden att undersöka djupare och de kategorier som ansågs relevanta var ekonomi, transportrelaterade aspekter, hälsa och välmående, miljö och risker. Andra steget var att kvantifiera och värdera dessa områden. Det fanns även områden som av olika anledningar inte kunde kvantifieras och dessa gjordes en kvalitativ analys på. För att kunna jämföra nutida, dåtida och framtida kostnader och nyttor diskonterades värderingarna med hjälp av nuvärdesmetoden och slutvärdesmetoden med en diskonteringsränta på 3.5 % och en livstid på 35 år och visas upp som ett sammanslaget nuvärde. Studien delas upp i tre olika scenarion baserat på hur många av de beräknade resanden som kommer att ha bytt från att åka bil till att börja använda kollektivtrafik tack vare tunnelbaneutbyggnaden. Dessa scenarion är: scenario ett, 8 %, scenario två, 14 % och scenario tre, 20 %, där procenttalen visar på hur stor del av de nya resande som har bytt från att åka bil till att använda tunnelbana.   Scenario ett och två visar på ett negativt nuvärde, där scenario två ligger precis under gränsen medan det tredje scenariot visar på ett positivt nuvärde som indikerar att projektet är värt att investera i. En stor del av nyttorna kommer från just sociala effekter vilket visar på användbarheten i den här studien. De områden som har störst påverkan på slutresultatet är investeringskostnaden och driftskostnader samt nyttor från minskade trafikstockningar, tillgänglighet till jobb och restidsminskningar. De områden som värderats som hade minst påverkan var nyttor från utsläppsreduceringar och liv som räddats genom färre olyckor. Den största bristen med denna rapport är att den, precis som liknande kostnads-nyttoanalyser, visar på en förenklad bild av verkligheten då det helt enkelt inte är möjligt tidsmässigt eller datamässigt att få med alla kostnader och nyttor då dessa är för komplexa. Många av beräkningarna blir därför uppskattningar av ett riktigt värde men resultatet ger ändå en fingervisning till om projektet är lönsamt att investera i då det visar på att en övergång från bil till tunnelbana på 14.65 % och över ger en positiv investering. Eftersom att det finns nyttor som bara analyserats kvalitativt i denna rapport visar det på att det kan finnas ännu mer värde i investeringen och att den har en potential att vara lönsam även om övergången skulle visa sig vara under 14.65 %. De relativt höga värdena som sociala nyttor har fått i denna rapport visar på att många andra kostnads-nyttoanalyser skulle kunna ge andra utslag om den dimensionen varit med i beräkningarna och är ett område som måste få större tyngd i framtida socioekonomiska beräkningar.

The aim of this study is to establish a nation-wide cost-benefit framework for aviation projection appraisal. This framework is built upon Transportation System Analysis Model developed at Virginia Tech Air Transportation System Model (TSAM). Both supply and demand characteristics and their inter-dependence are investigated. It attempts to solve the absence of supply constraints in aviation demand forecast in the literature. In addition, external costs in term of noise and emission are also considered. A national environmental impact analysis introduced by new generation small aircraft system is conducted. Two case studies are discussed to illustrate the framework. The first one is based on the GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Lower Landing Minima capability. It represents a nation-wide cost-benefit analysis with examination of both supply and demand. System-wide benefit of accessibility improvement and infrastructure cost are scrutinized at the same time. A prioritized set of candidate airports for this technology is provided as a result. The second study focuses on New York area. Benefits brought by DataComm technology are evaluated by multi-iteration simulations. DataComm is projected to reduce entry point intrail and final approach separation. The improvements are modeled at individual airport and New York airspace. Consumer surplus is estimated based on demand and delay relationship using TSAM. / Ph. D.

Children are conceptualized many ways by economists-- as sources of utility for their parents, investments, recipients of care, and public goods. Despite the understanding that children are also people, the economic literature is lacking in analysis of children as actors, making choices with consequences for economic development. Using a capability-driven approach and an emphasis on co-evolutionary processes of institutional and individual change, with mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, my dissertation analyzes the role of children in long-term economic development at the community level. I use a case study of community-based, out-of-school time (OST) programs for low-income youth funded through the 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) to analyze the role of youth in economic development. OST programs provide community-level benefits such as reductions in juvenile crime and foster economic development by creating linkages between the state, the market, the community, and the family. My study contributes to the body of interdisciplinary research on OST programs, and is situated in the middle ground between case studies with very small samples and quantitative studies with a narrow focus on academic performance as measured by grades. The 21st CCLC programs in New York State are unique in their emphasis on partnerships between schools and community-based organizations. An analysis of the costs and benefits of OST programs shows that the benefits of programs such as 21st CCLC substantially outweigh the costs. Using Geographic Information Systems and statistical analysis, I examine the relationship between eligibility for 21st CCLC funding, demographic characteristics related to the need for free or low-cost OST programs, and the presence of 21st CCLC programs, and find that the presence of these programs cannot be explained solely through the characteristics of people who will be served by them. Additionally, it is clear that there are not enough 21st CCLC programs to serve all eligible communities, raising questions about the scale of funding as well as its distribution.

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This thesis aims to examine if the rise in crime, in the suburbs of the Stockholm region, can be explained by the effect of residential segregation on behaviour. The main focus of this thesis is the three primary approaches to economics of crime; Freeman’s (1999) cost-benefit analysis, Wynarczyk’s (2002) theory on intersubjectivity and morals affect on crime participation, and finally Feldman and Smith's (2014) analysis of how morals effect good and bad people. To investigate if the rise in crime can be explained by the effect of residential segregation on behaviour, an experimental questionnaire containing six fictitious scenarios isused with the aim of functioning as an experiment in a simplified form. The participants are randomly selected residents from different suburbs around Stockholm, with different ethnic backgrounds and from allages above 15. The experiment generated the data of 348 participants in total, where the participants are placed in different fictional scenarios. In each scenario the participants have to choose whether they would choose to commit crime or not given the context. The scenarios are followed by a shorter section with background questions about gender, age, ethnic background and where in Stockholm they live. With the generated data from the second shorter section we were able to perform logit regression analysis to see the correlations. We found that foreign-born individuals were most likely to commit crime in most scenarios but domestic-born individuals with domestic-born parents were more likely to commit crime when placed in scenarios that were very realistic for those who lived in the exposed suburbs where segregation and crime is very high. However, this result was not statistically significant, which means that further study with more observations could be more informative. This implies that a solution to diffuse crime geographically could be to reduce segregation by having more advantageous nodes, which refers to individuals that are willing to move to neighbourhoods that do not consist of their own kind, and therefore break the structures of parallel societies and have a more integrated society with less crime. In order to establish all the factors that affect crime participation linked to segregation, further research is recommended