The year 2020 has so far stood completely under the influence of Corona. The virus was first detected in China in late 2019, and spread all over the globe over the coming months. Nearly everyone was, and is, affected. People were afraid of getting infected and limited all sort of social interaction. Many countries implemented shutdowns with the goal of reducing the spread of the virus and saving lives. While the virus has spread, the world have experienced the severe recession in a long time. Beyond economics, Corona is present in every aspect of our daily life. On the one hand, there has been a tremendous number of touching examples of care for people at risk, and support for the parts of the population who are most affected by the consequences of the epidemic. On the other hand, some people deny the severity of the virus, question the need for social distancing and protest against public health measures. This work aims to summarise the economic literature as of June 2020 on the trade-off between saving lives and livelihoods. The authors wrote it during a Bachelor Seminar, while the whole world learned simultaneously about COVID-19.

Governments play a key role in modern economies. However, modern-day governments face several challenges that limit their functioning. Some examples include inadequate conduct of elections, tax evasion, and market failures. Each chapter in this thesis explores a key challenge faced by government and policy intervention that helps address it. Chapter 1 explores the poor turnout of women in India and tests whether increasing security at the polling booths increases women's representation. Chapter 2 explores the role of tax evasion by firms in low revenue collection under a Value Added Tax (VAT) in India. Chapter 3 examines the current housing crisis in major cities across the United States and evaluates the effects of tax incentives designed to encourage new residential investment. To provide robust causal evidence, I use natural experiments combined with novel microdata. Chapter 1 uses a regression discontinuity design arising from the rule used to assign security measures to polling booths during a major state election in India. In particular, polling booths which received more than 75% of votes in favor of one candidate in the previous election received security measures with a higher probability. I use the regression discontinuity design to estimate effects on women's share in total turnout and political outcomes. Chapter 2 uses the staggered roll-out of VAT across states in India to estimate the effect of VAT adoption on vertical integration in firms. Chapter 3 uses a natural experiment in New York City where a delayed implementation of the property tax increase on new construction led to a short-term boom in residential investment as developers rushed to claim expiring tax benefits. I estimate effects on nearby rents, demographics, businesses. The end result is a set of robust policy conclusions. Chapter 1 finds that strengthening security at the polling booths increased women's turnout, which in turn had consequences for political outcomes. For instance, suggestive evidence indicates that non-incumbent and educated candidates received more votes whereas corrupt candidates received fewer votes. Chapter 2 finds that firms integrated vertically to evade taxes under a Value Added Tax. This suggests that low revenue collection in developing countries is possibly a combination of both evasion and real production response of firms. Chapter 3 finds that new tax-exempt residential investment increased rents in existing buildings within 150 meters. This happened because new building attracted high-income residents who increased demand for local businesses, reflected in the entry of businesses that cater to high-income residents. The result highlights potential negative spillover effects of new construction on incumbent low-income residents and suggests that optimal tax policy must incorporate such spillovers when designing incentives that encourage investment.

Using an early warning system (EWS) methodology, this thesis analyses the predictability of stock market crises from the perspective of behavioural fnance. Specifcally, in our EWS based on the multinomial logit model, we consider in- vestor sentiment as one of the potential crisis indicators. Identifcation of the relevant crisis indicators is based on Bayesian model averaging. The empir- ical results reveal that price-earnings ratio, short-term interest rate, current account, credit growth, as well as investor sentiment proxies are the most rele- vant indicators for anticipating stock market crises within a one-year horizon. Our thesis hence provides evidence that investor sentiment proxies should be a part of the routinely considered variables in the EWS literature. In general, the predictive power of our EWS model as evaluated by both in-sample and out-of-sample performance is promising. JEL Classifcation G01, G02, G17, G41 Keywords Stock market crises, Early warning system, In- vestor sentiment, Crisis prediction, Bayesian model averaging Title Predicting stock market crises using investor sentiment indicators

Background: Crisis management has become a highly relevant topic due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, restaurants have been forced to implement new business strategies and tactics to mitigate its impact. For restaurants, it quickly became important to adapt and apply the right strategy to survive which created a unique opportunity to form an understanding of what actual strategic choices restaurants have applied during a pandemic.  Purpose: The purpose of this study aims at creating an understanding of how Swedish restaurants in the city of Jönköping have been able to survive the pandemic, more specifically, identify what crisis strategies and tactics restaurant owners have utilized.   Method: The aim of this paper was pursued by a qualitative research method with an inductive approach. In order to investigate the research question, a multiple case study has been conducted. Data have been collected through semi-structured interviews from seven different restaurant owners that form the basis of the empirical data.  Conclusions: The conclusions revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic had a negative effect on the restaurants and that they had to make changes in their activities in order to stay in business. The empirical findings demonstrated these changes as three core strategies utilized through different tactics in order to cope with the pandemic. Given that unexpected events can happen in the future at any time, it is crucial for managers to learn from the past and implement different strategies in their business and thereby successfully adjust to the diverse external environment.

The study covers oil and the power it entails and focuses on oil interdependence, oil-related conflicts and crises and macroeconomic effects. This thesis aims to examine the global oil industry's trade structure, to clarify the international geopolitical situation in the oil industry, and to analyze the effects of fluctuations in price on a macroeconomic level. The research has an explorative but also descriptive nature and can be classified as a correlational study. The thesis is mainly based on qualitative references obtained from interviews supplemented with quantitative data. The majority of conflicts in the Middle East can be classified as oil related, with a major impact on oil prices as a result. Oil price fluctuations correlate with and influence the macroeconomic situation in different countries, and the degree of the correlation varies due to the extent certain countries depend on oil. Interdependence is thus a significant factor in economic and geopolitical development. The study contributes to a deeper understanding and a more profound knowledge regarding global impact due to oil interdependence. This thesis indicates that the integration of oil in today’s society increases the world’s vulnerability to changes in the oil industry and therefore, oil contributes to power. / Denna studie omfattar oljans makt och fokuserar på beroendeförhållanden, oljerelaterade konflikter och kriser samt makroekonomiska effekter. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka den globala oljeindustrins handelsstruktur, kartlägga det internationella geopolitiska läget inom oljebranschen samt analysera oljeprissvängningars direkta effekter på ett makroekonomiskt plan. Studien har en explorativ men även deskriptiv karaktär och kan klassificeras som en sambandsstudie. Undersökningen baseras på kvalitativa källor genom intervjuer och kompletteras med kvantitativ data. Flertalet konflikter som ägt rum i Mellanöstern är oljerelaterade vilket har resulterat i betydande effekter på oljepriset. Oljeprisförändringar påverkar och korrelerar med det makroekonomiska läget i enskilda länder, hur stark denna korrelation är beror dock av i vilken utsträckning ett land är beroende av olja. Beroendet är alltså en betydande del i ekonomisk och geopolitisk utveckling. Studien bidrar till en ökad förståelse och en fördjupad kunskap i oljeindustrins beroendeförhållanden och dess globala påverkan. I studien framgår att oljans integrering i samhället gör världen sårbar för förändringar i oljeindustrin, olja bidrar därför till makt.

This study set out to explore the subjective experience of crises and life changes in the family which precede the onset of schizophrenia. The motivation for it arose from the vulnerability-stress model of schizophrenia which proposes that environmental factors such as stressful life events may help to trigger the onset or exacerbation of symptoms in people who have a genetic vulnerability for the condition. Related research suggests that crises and life changes in the family can contribute to the stress experienced by those who go on to become psychologically disturbed. This has led to an increased interest in accessing the subjective experience of schizophrenia as shared by individuals and their families through the use of narratives to provide alternative perspectives on the condition. Indeed, a growing body of evidence from research conducted with people diagnosed with schizophrenia suggests that the content of their actions and statements can be construed as meaningful and logical in the context of their family and life situations. Four individuals who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and their families participated in this study. In each case study, two interviews were conducted, one with the individual participant and a second interview with the individual and those members of their family that were willing to attend. The interviews were guided by a semistructured interview schedule and data from the interviews was analysed using content analyses and the most prominent themes were discussed in relation to the literature. The themes in the data describe the participants’ subjective experience of the many crises and life events and change in psychological functioning that precedes the onset of florid psychotic symptoms. These findings suggest that the schizophrenic symptoms of the participants in this study helped to absorb the impact of family stressors and played a fundamental role in keeping the family systems intact. The associated behaviour appeared to sustain the roles in the family as well as long-standing patterns of interaction between the family members. The numerous interacting influences and sheer variation in the experience of just four families indicates that much still needs to be understood about the experience of schizophrenia. It is recommended that future research investigate how the subjective understanding of schizophrenia affects the lives of those affected. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Psychology / unrestricted

This paper investigates the impact of the 2008's financial crisis on local crime rates in Sweden. I deploy a difference-in-differences approach that contrasts the changes in reported crimes between municipalities that are more or less crisis-exposed. The results show no significant effect on any crime category nor the aggregate crime rate. However, there are indications of more densely populated municipalities experiencing an increase in crimes with underlying financial incentives, although not robust. The results are similar when the effect of the Great Recession is compared to the major financial crisis that hit Sweden in the early 90s, suggesting that economic crises do not cause any reactions in crimes. One explanation could be the increase in social grants recipients and the participation in labour market programmes. Both of which cushions the fall in income and reduces criminal motivation. The results appear robust for a variety of alternative severity measures. Potential spillovers between adjacent municipalities do not seem to be a threat as the results are similar for county-level regressions. Overall, the findings in this paper point towards the number of reported crimes being unaffected by the crisis exposure measured as the employment change and change in retail sales.

The widespread image of refugee camps only represents less than half of the world's refugee population, as the great majority of them are in urban settlements. This is caused by the phenomenon of global urbanisation, which has ultimately affected forced displacement. One of the most representative examples is the refugee crisis in Syria, referred to as 'urban' as most refugees live among host communities in Lebanon or Jordan, rather than in camps. Therefore, this thesis will explore through the case study of Beirut and Syrian refugees, the challenges of urban crises and how humanitarian practitioners have tried to adapt and develop new ways of responding to them.  The underlying context of urban poverty, the time frame, the great number of stakeholders and the coexistence with host communities, were identified as some of the most challenging features of cities in this research. In this context, refugees will have to navigate between dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and humanitarian actors will face crises that are already within others. Thus, to understand this reality means to redirect the focus towards new ways of humanitarian action, to urbanize the approach. Through a review of leading organisations, authors and research centres, we will identify the main challenges in responding to urban crises of mass forced displacement. This will be done under the theoretical framework offered by context analysis tools, as they allow for a better understanding of the political, economic, geographical and socio-cultural factors that give rise to a crisis. They will focus on the contextual understanding of the urban humanitarian response.

In this thesis, we address two types of modeling of random events. The first one, contained in Chapters 2 and 3, is related to the modeling of dependent stopping times. In Chapter 2, we use a modified Cox construction, along with a modification of the bivariate exponential introduced by Marshall & Olkin (1967), to create a family of stopping times, which are not necessarily conditionally independent, allowing for a positive probability for them to be equal. We also present a series of results exploring the special properties of this construction, along with some generalizations and possible applications. In Chapter 3, we present a detailed application of our model to Credit Risk theory. We propose a new measure of systemic risk that is consistent with the economic theories relating to the causes of financial market failures and can be estimated using existing hazard rate methodologies, and hence, it is simple to estimate and interpret. We do this by characterizing the probability of a market failure which is defined as the default of two or more globally systemically important banks (G-SIBs) in a small interval of time. We derive various theorems related to market failure probabilities, such as the probability of a catastrophic market failure, the impact of increasing the number of G-SIBs in an economy, and the impact of changing the initial conditions of the economy's state variables. The second type of random events we focus on is the failure of a group in the context of microlending, which is a loan made by a bank to a small group of people without credit histories. Since the creation of this mechanism by Muhammed Yunus, it has received a fair amount of academic attention. However, one of the issues not yet addressed in full detail is the issue of the size of the group. In Chapter 4, we propose a model with interacting forces to find the optimal group size. We define "optimal" as that group size that minimizes the probability of default of the group. Ultimately, we show that the original choice of Muhammad Yunus, of a group size of five people, is, under the right, and, we believe, reasonable hypotheses, either close to optimal, or even at times exactly optimal, i.e., the optimal group size is indeed five people.

Inom ambulanssjukvården ingår det i den vardagliga arbetsmiljön att utsättas för stressiga situationer. Det krävs att ambulanspersonalen är alert, förberedd och flexibel för att hantera det oväntade. Regelbunden exponering för trauman kan bidra till känslomässiga svårigheter. Vilket kräver stöd och hjälp för att hantera de stressreaktioner som kan uppstå till följd av en allvarlig händelse. Syftet var att belysa ambulanspersonals copingstrategier och upplevelse av krisstöd i samband med en allvarlig händelse. Som metod användes en allmän litteraturöversikt där 15 artiklar inkluderades i resultatet. Artikelsökningen gjordes i databaserna PubMed, CINAHL och PsykInfo, resultatet analyserades med hjälp av Forsberg och Wengströms analysprocess. Analysen genererade fem kategorier. I resultatet framkom fem kategorier; Före händelse - förberedande copingstrategier, under händelsen - copingstrategier för omhändertagande, efter händelsen - copingstrategier för bearbetning och upplevelsen av krisstöd, ledning och organisation samt kulturella skillnader. Där framkom det att emotionellt fokuserad coping var den mest förekommande metoden för att hantera stress i samband med en allvarlig händelse. Det mest uppskattade stödet erhölls av en nära kollega, familj eller vänner. Ambulanspersonalen uppgav att det fanns ett missnöje med ledningens stöd och omhändertagande efter en allvarlig händelse. Som slutsats var det huvudsakliga fyndet att ambulanspersonal främst använde sig av emotionellt fokuserad coping och en erfaren kollega var ett viktigt stöd för att hantera stress då de bidrog till en känsla av trygghet, säkerhet samt stärkte kompetensen. Studiens resultat påvisade vikten av tid för återhämtning och reflektion. Litteraturöversikten identifierat en rad olika förbättringsåtgärder såsom ett förbättrat krisstöd samt ett ökat behov av utbildning och kunskap i stresshantering. / In ambulance care, it is part of the everyday work environment to be exposed to stressfulsituations. The ambulance staff is required to be alert, prepared, and flexible to manage theunexpected. Regular exposure to trauma can contribute to emotional difficulties, whichrequires support and help to deal with the stress reactions that can occur because of a seriousincident. The aim was to highlight the ambulance personnel coping strategies and experience of crisissupport in the event of a serious incident. As a method, a general literature review was used where 15 articles were included in theresult. The article search was performed in the databases PubMed, CINAHL and PsykInfo,the results were analyzed with the help of Forsberg and Wengström's analysis process. The analysis generated in five categories. The results revealed five categories; Before the event - preparatory coping strategies, duringthe event - coping strategies for caretaking, after the event - coping strategies for processingand the experience of crisis support, management and organization as well as culturaldifferences. Emotionally focused coping was the most common method when dealing withstress after a serious incident. The most appreciated support was received by a closecolleague, family, or friends. The ambulance staff stated that there was dissatisfaction in themanagement's support and care after a serious incident. In conclusion, the main finding was that ambulance mainly used the emotionally focusedcoping and an experienced colleague as support for managing stress as they contributed to asense of security, safety, and strengthens competence. The results of the study demonstratedthe importance of the need for recovery and reflection. The literature review identified anumber of different improvement measures such as improved crisis support and an increasedneed for training and knowledge in stress management.