In this thesis, Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs are used to measure the effects of organized crime on young men’s experience of narcotics. The study relies on panel data for Swedish counties stretching over the period 1995-2005, using results from conscript surveys to determine young men’s experience of narcotics. When applying a fixed effect model, the results show that Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs actually have a negative effect on the experience of narcotics among 18-year-old Swedish men. However, when lagging the time of establishment for the gangs one year, positive estimates are derived for individuals ever used, or been offered to use illicit narcotics. These findings are only significant on a ten percent level, but the results could implicate that it may take some time for the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs to penetrate new markets; finding a profitable way of adapting to the new market conditions. Due to possible problems with endogeneity, it’s difficult to derive any definitive conclusions regarding the true effects of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. It’s possible that the location of a new OMG is partially determined by the use of narcotics, wherefore the results are to be taken with some caution.

The objective of Paper [I] is to analyze potential effects on the Swedish forest sector of a continuing rise in the use of forest resources as fuel in energy generation. An increasing use of forest resources as an energy input may have effects outside the energy sector. In this paper we consider this by estimating a system of demand and supply equations for the four main actors on the Swedish roundwood market. In Paper [II], we estimate a dynamic factor demand model for the Swedish pulp industry. We find weak evidence of adjustment costs for capital. The results suggest that the user cost of capital is a significant determinant of pulp industry investments. We also find that pulp industry investments are insensitive to variations in the price of electricity. Paper [III] proposes a flexible form of adjustment cost function. An empirical illustration shows that the flexible form can detect both convex and non-convex adjustment costs. Furthermore, the flexible form permits testing for the experience effect on adjustment cost. The objective of paper [IV] is to analyze the price formation for wood fuel used by the Swedish district heating sector. According to previous research there is a significant potential for increasing the use of wood fuel in Sweden. The question raised in this paper is why this potential is not realized. According to our results we cannot reject the efficient market hypothesis for all years. The objective of Paper [V] is to test for market power on the market for biofuels. To achieve our objective we make use of the idea of Granger causality. If past values of quantity contribute significantly to the determination of price, quantity is said to Granger cause price, which we will treat as a sign of market power. According to our findings this effect is present.

This thesis consists of three papers that examine Marshallian sources of growthand interdependent location of Swedish firms and households. Paper [I] examines the impact of static and dynamic knowledge externalitiesand their impact on Swedish market operating firms growth pattern between1997 and 2005. The three types of externalities are: (i) Marshall-Arrow-Romer(MAR), (ii) Jacobs, and (iii) Porter. My empirical findings for the 40 industriescan briefly be summarized in the following points: (i) static MAR, Jacobsand/or Porter externalities are present in all but nine industries; (ii) except for five cases all industries are exposed to one or more of the MAR, Jacobs and/orPorter type of dynamic externalities; (iii) contrary to previous studies but inline with theoretical predictions, we do find positive and significant effects forstatic as well as dynamic Jacobs externalities. Paper [II] focuses on the presence of agglomeration economies in the form of labor pooling and educational matching and their impact on economic growth in Swedish manufacturing and service industries from 1997 to 2005. To accomplish this I employ a translog production function that enables me to decompose the total agglomeration elasticities into returns that accrue to: direct agglomeration effects, an indirect effect of agglomeration at given input levels, a cross agglomeration effect of matching on labor pooling and vice versa. Household services is the single industry where both the labor pooling and matching hypothesis is supported by our data. Publishing is the sole instance of betterinput usage due to matching consistent with the theoretical claim. Paper [III] studies the interdependent location choices of households and firms expressed as population and employment in Swedish municipalities. Using a model of the Carlino-Mills type to investigate the impact of various location attributes such as differences in public revenue and spending patterns, accessibility to jobs and potential workforce, quality of the labor pool, concentration ofcommercial, private and public services. The findings suggest that fiscal factors significantly alters the impact of housing and accessibility attributes compared to exiting studies on Swedish data. Another finding, in line with previous studies, indicate that there is a significant degree of inertia in household and firm location choices.

Due to widespread decentralization of spending responsibilities, increasing revenue power and borrowing capacity of sub-national governments, sub-national borrowing has become an increasingly important source of sub-national finance. While there are arguments for and against giving sub-national authorities room for raising their own financial resources, appropriate sub-national borrowing regulatory framework can reduce chances of defaults and fiscal crises. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of sub-national borrowing regulations in maintaining fiscal sustainability. More precisely, it tests the hypothesis that is sub-national borrowing is restricted to financing capital investments (the “golden rule”), and if the sub-national governments are provided with some measure of revenue autonomy, then the sub-national borrowing should not endanger fiscal sustainability. Based on the sub-national government panel data for 57 countries between 1990 and 2008 and applying the system GMM estimator and the survival analysis, this dissertation provides support for this hypothesis. The results suggest that the “golden rule” is effective in maintaining fiscal sustainability at both general and sub-national government level. Sub-national tax autonomy, however, seems to have positive but very small marginal effect on fiscal sustainability. The obtained results also emphasize the risk of the soft budget constraint and the moral hazard. Significant central government financing may give encouraging signs to the sub-national governments to over-borrow and to expect being bailed out by the central government. The results obtained in this dissertation imply following policy recommendations. First, sub-national government borrowing does not have to endanger fiscal sustainability if the borrowing regulation framework is well designed and according to specific country circumstances. Second, reducing fiscal dependence on central government financing reduces the risk of moral hazard and improves the effectiveness of borrowing control in maintaining fiscal balance at the sustainable level.

There are several arguments why the economic analysis of gambling seems to be very interesting. Gambling is a very important economic industry from which either local or national governments obtain resources due to some sort of fiscal imposition on gambling participation. On the other hand, the consumption of gambling seems to violate the premises of economic theory (risk aversion, maximizing and rational conduct). The empirical literature on this field has tried to answer several questions that might be summarized as follows: Who does gamble? Why do people gamble? And, how do game features, such as the rules or the prize structure, affect the demand for gambling? This thesis tries to shed more light on the questions identified above, focusing on the particular case of state-operated lotteries and football pools in Spain. Specifically, we are interested in examining what aspects drive gamblers' participation in Spanish lottery markets and spending on lotteries, focusing on network externalities in consumer spending on closely related lottery goods. Next, we study the demand for a particular game, paying attention to the factors that explain why individuals bet, especially, those that refer to the design of the game and the structure of prizes. Finally, the analysis of the main economic determinants of demand for gambling is extended to football pools as a particular form of sports gambling. In addition to these empirical exercises, this study contributes to the economics of gambling by briefly reviewing the theoretical work and empirical highlights from the previous analysis of the demand for lottery.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of the Business Opportunity Projects (BOPs) that the Swedish Trade Council uses when promoting export for small enterprises. The Business Opportunity Projects have the same type of setup for all offices where the Swedish Trade Council is established and are subsidized by 60 percent from the government. A dataset on firms’ financial state on a ten year basis is used and survey interviews conducted in 2005/06 and 2007/08. From this data three types of methods are used; a calculations on expected values of return; a panel data model and a probit model.The results show that the expected return of one project is around 250 000 SEK and if the project is successful the average return is around 1 000 000 SEK. The governmental return is around 22 times the invested money. The probability of creating business volume directly or indirectly is around 45 percent. It is also shown that the projects have an impact on the export turnover of the participating firms. The effect comes after two years and it increases until four years after the BOP. The interpretation of the exact effect should be made with caution due to estimation issues. The result also indicates that the BOP generates around 1.5 employees on averages.The results show that the participating firms do not have advantage being larger, or being from the middle region of Sweden nor in a specific branch in order to have a successful project. Firms from north part of Sweden that have a slightly smaller chance of having a successful project, if the project is made in Western European offices, the firms have a higher probability to succeed compared to other offices.

One of the most important objectives for any countries is to sustain high economic growth. Even though there are main factors that affect economic growth, the concern of this paper is only about inflation. The relationship between economic growth and inflation is debatable. The first objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between inflation and economic growth. This study uses panel data which includes 13 SSA countries from 1969 to 2009. To analyze the data the model is formed by taking economic growth as dependent variable and four variables (i.e. inflation, investment, population and initial GDP) as independent variables. The result indicates that there is a negative relationship between economic growth and inflation. This study is also examined the causality relationship between economic growth and inflation by using panel Granger causality test. Panel granger causality test shows that inflation can be used in order to predict growth for all countries in the sample, while the opposite it is only true for Congo, Dep. Rep and Zimbabwe.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the changes in trade values are affected by the implementation of the euro currency. We study the EU members, including 11 EMU members and 3 non-EMU members (Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom). The empirical analysis is conducted by using a modified version of the standard gravity model. Our core findings can be summarized into two parts. First, the euro effect on trade which is estimated by the euro-dummy coefficient reflects an adverse influence by the euro creation on trade values for the first two years of the implementation on all our sample countries. It leads us to a conclusion that there is no significant improvement of trade in the year of implementation. These results do not change when a time trend variable is added to evaluate the robustness of the model. Our primary interpretation is that the euro creation does not have an immediate impact on trade but it is rather gradual as countries need time to adapt to a new currency. It is connected to our second finding that the negative influence of the euro implementation is not permanent but eventually initiates positive outcomes on trade values over time, thus concluding that the euro implementation has had gradual impact on both EMU and non-EMU members.

Employee turnover is a fairly common phenomenon across organizations throughout the globe, which creates both direct and indirect costs to companies (Lambert et al., 2012). Though numerous authors have investigated the problem, only a small number have studied the Canadian labour market. Furthermore, few have examined how various hiring or screening tests during the hiring process affect worker attrition. The thesis aims to complement existing research about employee voluntary turnover (vs. involuntary turnover) and retention by further investigating some of the root causes and potential solutions from a Canadian perspective. Using longitudinal data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) supplied by Statistics Canada through an 8-year period, it explores 5 hypotheses relating to the initial hiring process (ten screening tests), the gender and marital status of employees, compensation, and employees’ seniority in the company. The survey datasets are based on respondents of, on average, 6,268 companies and 20,387 corresponding workers from 1999 to 2006. Logit and probit regression models are employed for the empirical tests. The results are surprising, and seem to differ from most studies in other countries. In Canada, it appears wage has no effect on workers’ turnover at all, employee engagement programs negatively affect workers’ decisions to stay, women are more likely to quit than men are, married employees are no more likely to quit than anyone else, children seem to have no impact on employee attrition, and workers with lower status in the company are more likely to stay. The concluding chapter discusses implications of these findings and how they might help Canadian organizations deal with employee voluntary turnover.

<p>This dissertation consists of three chapters relating to</p> <p>identification and inference in dynamic microeconometric models</p> <p>including dynamic discrete games with many players, dynamic games with</p> <p>discrete and continuous choices, and semiparametric binary choice and</p> <p>duration panel data models.</p> <p>The first chapter provides a framework for estimating large-scale</p> <p>dynamic discrete choice models (both single- and multi-agent models)</p> <p>in continuous time. The advantage of working in continuous time is</p> <p>that state changes occur sequentially, rather than simultaneously,</p> <p>avoiding a substantial curse of dimensionality that arises in</p> <p>multi-agent settings. Eliminating this computational bottleneck is</p> <p>the key to providing a seamless link between estimating the model and</p> <p>performing post-estimation counterfactuals. While recently developed</p> <p>two-step estimation techniques have made it possible to estimate</p> <p>large-scale problems, solving for equilibria remains computationally</p> <p>challenging. In many cases, the models that applied researchers</p> <p>estimate do not match the models that are then used to perform</p> <p>counterfactuals. By modeling decisions in continuous time, we are able</p> <p>to take advantage of the recent advances in estimation while</p> <p>preserving a tight link between estimation and policy experiments. We</p> <p>also consider estimation in situations with imperfectly sampled data,</p> <p>such as when we do not observe the decision not to move, or when data</p> <p>is aggregated over time, such as when only discrete-time data are</p> <p>available at regularly spaced intervals. We illustrate the power of</p> <p>our framework using several large-scale Monte Carlo experiments.</p> <p>The second chapter considers semiparametric panel data binary choice</p> <p>and duration models with fixed effects. Such models are point</p> <p>identified when at least one regressor has full support on the real</p> <p>line. It is common in practice, however, to have only discrete or</p> <p>continuous, but possibly bounded, regressors. We focus on</p> <p>identification, estimation, and inference for the identified set in</p> <p>such cases, when the parameters of interest may only be partially</p> <p>identified. We develop a set of general results for</p> <p>criterion-function-based estimation and inference in partially</p> <p>identified models which can be applied to both regular and irregular</p> <p>models. We apply our general results first to a fixed effects binary</p> <p>choice panel data model where we obtain a sharp characterization of</p> <p>the identified set and propose a consistent set estimator,</p> <p>establishing its rate of convergence under different conditions.</p> <p>Rates arbitrarily close to <italic>n<super>-1/3</super></italic> are</p> <p>possible when a continuous, but possibly bounded, regressor is</p> <p>present. When all regressors are discrete the estimates converge</p> <p>arbitrarily fast to the identified set. We also propose a</p> <p>subsampling-based procedure for constructing confidence regions in the</p> <p>models we consider. Finally, we carry out a series of Monte Carlo</p> <p>experiments to illustrate and evaluate the proposed procedures. We</p> <p>also consider extensions to other fixed effects panel data models such</p> <p>as binary choice models with lagged dependent variables and duration</p> <p>models.</p> <p>The third chapter considers nonparametric identification of dynamic</p> <p>games of incomplete information in which players make both discrete</p> <p>and continuous choices. Such models are commonly used in applied work</p> <p>in industrial organization where, for example, firms make discrete</p> <p>entry and exit decisions followed by continuous investment decisions.</p> <p>We first review existing identification results for single agent</p> <p>dynamic discrete choice models before turning to single-agent models</p> <p>with an additional continuous choice variable and finally to</p> <p>multi-agent models with both discrete and continuous choices. We</p> <p>provide conditions for nonparametric identification of the utility</p> <p>function in both cases.</p> / Dissertation