The radical rise of global temperatures has put high pressure on the environment, leading to societal pressure towards politicians to reverse the trend. In light of this environmental crisis, economists all over the world agree that carbon taxes are the most cost-effective instrument for reducing carbon emissions. This study uses difference-in-differences analysis to examine the treatment effect of a carbon tax implementation in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Panel data from 24 OECD countries, between 1978 and 2004, is used throughout this study. This study has not found support that different levels of democracy and GDP per capita affect tax efficiency. Moreover, higher levels of urbanisation are seen to undermine the efficiency of a carbon tax, however, the result may be affected by confounding bias. Lastly, tax rate and tax coverage are both factors that seem to affect carbon tax efficiency.

This doctoral dissertation proposal is comprised of three separate chapters, all of which uses the nationally representative uniform survey Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) to examine the relationship between health, insurance, health care and health outcomes. Below, the brief introduction for each section is provided:  Chapter I: Medicare Part D and Patients' Well-being  Chapter II: Parent's Health Insurance and Informal Care  Chapter III: Job Insecurity and Health (with Dr. Ayyagari) In chapter I, I explore how Medicare Part D (MD) affects the well-being of the severely sick patients both in the short- and in the long- term. I employ difference-in-difference (DD) alongside the instrumental variable (IV) model. The estimated results imply MD significantly improves mental health and increases regular drug utilization for the elderly. However, it neither systematically improves out-of-pocket payment (OOP) nor improves mortality across all waves. This suggests that MD provides an efficient mechanism to improve mental health and drug utilization, but might not necessarily enhance survival rate and financial burden for vulnerable patients. Chapter II investigates the relationship between informal care provided by the children and the take-up of health insurance by the near-elderly and elderly parents, and how the correlation is influenced by parent’s Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and Instrumental Activities of vii Daily Living (IADLs). The results indicate that when the endogeneity is controlled for, in-formal care systematically crowds out the take-up of private long-term care (LTC) insurance whereas “crowds in” the take-up of the total plan including supplement insurance plans (TSP). Nevertheless, the degree of both crowding-out and “crowding-in” effect is reduced when the severity of ADLs/IADLs disability level grows. Our study reflects (a) the strong demand for TSP and more additional health coverage within household budget line (b) and the potential gap between healthcare demands by the parents and the informal care provided by the children and the potential gap between the healthcare demands by the parents and the formal care covered by the insurance. Our estimates are robust to alternative measures of informal care. The final chapter III examines the causal effect of subjective job insecurity on health, using pooled ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed-effects (FE) and instrumental variable (IV) specifications. The estimate implies that the negative impact of job insecurity is more pronounced for certain outcomes such as mental health and the emergence of new health conditions. Job insecurity provides a powerful prediction on subsequent job displacement and real income loss. Sub-population such as low-employability/better-educated individuals or males responds more to job insecurity than their counterparts.

In this thesis, I study the effect of the downsizing of military bases after theCold War on both local house prices and neighboring municipalities’ houseprices. To establish causality, I use a Difference-in-Difference approach withTwo-Way Fixed Effects. Then an Event Study is performed to examinepossible dynamic effects. I studied both the general effect and heterogeneitytreatment effect. I found that there, in general, is no effect on local houseprices. Only from the 1999s defense bill, which increased local house priceswhen air force bases closed and decreased when army bases closed. However,there is evidence of spillover effects on neighboring municipalities’ houseprices in general, regardless of the base type, from the downsizing of themilitary.

Finanskrisen 2008–2009 medförde förödande konsekvenser för hela globen förra decennietvilka sipprade in och orsakade rippeleffekter på oväntade områden. Uppsatsens syfte kommervara att undersöka ett outforskat område, nämligen finanskrisens kausala inverkan påstudieresultat. Studien kommer ämna att använda instrument som mäter finanskrisens effektmot respektive kommun tillsammans med difference-in-difference metoden för att mäta omkommuner med hög exponering mot konjunkturkänsliga branscher presterar relativt sämre påde nationella proven i engelska, svenska, matematik och genomsnittligt meritvärde jämförtmed kommuner med låg exponering. Resultatet var att difference-in-difference estimateten förmatematik och genomsnittligt meritvärde var negativa och statistiskt signifikanta menpräglades av osäkerhet.

The United States has long waged war against drugs resulting in, amongst other things, theworld’s largest prison population and costing society billions of dollars yearly. As a possible solution to the problem, legalization of recreational marijuana has emerged with Colorado as a pioneering state. The purpose of this study is to examine whether legalization has a casual effect on unemployment and arrests. This was done by performing difference-in-difference estimations with Colorado as the treatment group, Georgia and Arizona as the control group with unemployment and varying offenses as dependent variables. The results indicate legalization leading to a decrease in marijuana possession arrests. However, the non-drug related offenses and unemployment increased, albeit without statistical significance, which means that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected and leaves room for questioning of the results. This may be explained by there being more factors affecting those variables, Thus, using legalization as a mean to decrease unemployment and arrest rates can be challenged.

Sedan coronapandemins utbrott har ett flertal restriktioner införts i Sverige, vilka inneburit att människor stannat hemma i större utsträckning än tidigare. På grund av en växande isolering har kvinnorättsliga organisationer världen över varnat om en potentiell ökning av våld mot kvinnor i nära relationer, då konsekvenserna av pandemin ökar exponeringen av riskfaktorer som förknippas med våldet. Våld i nära relationer är tidvis svårt att mäta då det finns ett stort mörkertal av våldsutsatta som inte anmäler till polisen. Därmed prövar forskningsvärlden alternativa data som förväntas fånga en bredare bild av våldsutsattheten världen över, där Googlesökningar visat potential och därav använts till denna uppsats. Fastän tidigare forskning och teoretisk bakgrund förutspått att våldet ökat under pandemin, fann difference-in-difference resultaten ingen effekt på nationell nivå. Däremot tycks Googlesökningar ökat mer i Stockholms län, där människor stannat hemma i större utsträckning relativt andra län.

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This study investigates the impact of the flight departure tax introduced in Sweden 1st of April 2018. The study focuses on how the departure tax has affected the numbersof flight passengers with domestic and international destinations. The analysis covers the time the period 2010-2019. A Difference-in-Difference approach and a dynamic Difference-in-Difference approach was used in this study. The results indicate that theflight tax reduced the numbers of passengers traveling both domestically and internationally in short term. Furthermore the estimations show that the tax had its largest effectduring the second year compared to the first year when the tax was introduced. However the effect seems to reduce in the last quartile of 2019 prominently among domestic travelers. The study suggests that further reaserch should be done in the field with moredetailed data of how the different tax rates in the swedish depature tax affected thenumbers of passengers covered by those tax rates. Subsequently a further research on how the tax affected the cross price elasticity between passengers traveling by train andairplane is suggested.

The covid-19 pandemic affected people’s health in several different ways, and government policies to address the pandemic sometimes needed to trade-off between containment of thevirus and other health aspects. This study aims to evaluate the effect of lockdown-policies on individuals’ mental wellbeing. To this end, we use a difference-in-difference method, comparing proxies for mental health before and after lockdown recommendations in 2020 relative to the same calendar months in the year preceding the pandemic. To measure mental health, we use data from Google Trends on the relative search intensity on words and classes of words associated with mental illness of various kinds. The results show that searches onmental illness increased in Sweden from March 2020, right after social distancing measures were put in place. To assess whether social isolation is a key mechanism rather than a general pandemic effect, we present hetergeneous effects by the share of single-person households atthe county level, which support social isolation as a potential channel. Given that thestate-imposed lockdown in Sweden was partial, the results can be considered a lower boundof social distance effects on mental illness. / Covid-19 pandemin påverkade människors hälsa på flera olika sätt och insatser för att hantera pandemin innebar ibland en avvägning mellan smittspridning och andra hälsoaspekter. Denna studie syftar till att utvärdera effekter av smittskyddsåtgärder på människors psykiska hälsa i Sverige. Med hjälp av en difference-in-difference metod jämförs proxyvariabler för mentalohälsa före och efter införande av restriktioner under 2020 relativt samma kalendermånader föregående år. Med data från Google Trends undersöks pandemins effekt på den relativasökintensiteten på ord och kategorier av ord förknippade med psykisk ohälsa. Resultaten visar att sökningar på ord relaterade till psykisk ohälsa ökade i Sverige från mars 2020 då de första restriktionerna om social distansering infördes. I syfte att se om social distansering ären viktig mekanism snarare än en generell pandemieffekt, utförs en heterogenitetsanalys på andel singelhushåll på länsnivå. Den visar att social distansering är en möjlig kanal. Givet att Sverige inte införde en regelrätt “lockdown” kan resultaten betraktas som ett lower bound avsocial distanserings effekt på psykisk ohälsa.

The global pandemic Covid-19 caused an inevitable impact on economic growth and public health. Policymakers were forced to opt for the zero or the non-zero strategy to ease the economic effects and stop the spreading of infection. Previous literature on the matter strikingly agreed that the zero strategy was optimal. This paper’s primary purpose is to analyse the impact of zero and non-zero strategies on economic growth by comparing the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The empirical methodology utilised in this paper constitutes the traditional Difference in Difference (DiD) design in a two-way fixed effects framework. The dataset contained 38 OECD member countries during the period 2015 to 2021. The countries were assigned to a treatment group and a control group based on the chosen strategy. The main results contradict previous literature and presented a significant and negative relationship between the zero strategy and gross domestic product per capita growth. In the case of future global pandemics, these findings can facilitate the choice of action aiming to mitigate the economic effects.