STS, today the abbreviation for Science and Technology Studies (formerly Science, Technology and Society), is an elusive field characterized by widely varying applications and intents, highly dependent on individual people and facets, yet sharing some common aims and practices. STS has risen since the 1960s and this empirical study presents a view on STS today and a discussion on how it has developed by the analysis of five different representatives from different locations in the field of STS.

Det övergripande syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur och till vilken grad SKF:s utländska investerare har påverkat utvecklingen i SKF mellan 1988 och 2002. Jag valde att inrikta mig på tre specifika områden. För det första valde jag att undersöka utvecklingen kring ägarstrukturen och makten inom SKF. För det andra valde jag att undersöka utländska investerares påverkan på SKF:s finanser och för det tredje att undersöka ett eventuellt samband mellan andelen utländska investerare och SKF-aktiens kursutvecklingUndersökningen resulterade i att det är väldigt svårt att påvisa ett samband mellan utländska investerares ökande ägarandel och SKF:s generella utveckling. Ingen specifik andel kan tillmätas dem, men vi får trots det inte förbise att de faktiskt ägde en allt större del i SKF.

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This paper aims to analyze the effect of the American Subprime crisis of 2007 through the perspective ofHaynes Minsky’s model according to Charles Kindleberger. The investigation revolves how the anatomyof a financial crisis develops and how it is applicable to the Subprime crisis. More specific conclusionsare derived from applying Minsky’s model to the three largest American indices; Dow Jones industrialaverage, S&P500 and NASDAQ. To deepen the analysis the Case-Shiller home price indices acts as a second parameter tocompliment Minsky’s perspective with Robert J. Shiller’s analysis of American home prices. Furthermore the total debt for consumers owned and securitized is analyzed to reach anunderstanding of the scale of problems if Minsky’s model predicts a crisis. The aim is to answer how the financial crisis has developed according to Minsky’sanatomy of a financial crisis and if the crisis has not fully developed how it might continue. The creditmarket was brought to a virtual halt after a large investment bank was forced to borrow from theFederal Reserve to survive. This came to be the trigger of the subprime crisis where uncertain houseprices were the focus of the summer of 2007. Kindleberger may have the answer for how the currentcrisis could develop, which through financial analysis, may reveal the future pulse of the US markets. As the conclusion in this paper reveals that the three parameters have very differentcycles when Kindleberger’s interpretation of Minsky’s model is applied. The stockmarkets indicies havetwo cycles of the financial anatomical analysis, the credit market had two cyles and the housing markethas had merely one cycle between 1987 and 2009. The reason for this is most likely that these marketsare correlated yet the movements in pricing seem to lag between the markets, hence the difference in theamount of financial anatomical cycles.

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<p>In 1817, the then fourteen-year old bank, Malmö diskont, was the target of a bank run and the bank had to close. It had already been put under government control, due to mismanagement in the last few years of its existence. At the time, Malmö diskont was one of three privately owned banks and all three had to close as a result of a loss of confidence and bank runs also on the other two banks. Thus, private banks, with their roots in the 18th century disappeared, with noticeable economic repercussions. Although there was an unofficial credit market, consisting of the merchants and private bankers, (in addition to the government-owned Riksens Ständers Bank) it took a long time to restore confidence in privately owned commercial banks.</p><p> This Licentiate thesis deals with this financial crisis in Sweden in 1817. The purpose is to describe this crisis from an institutional perspective and incorporate both formal and informal institutions to help explain why this crisis occurred. The basic assumption is that institutions both set the limits for individuals’ actions and sometimes direct them towards actions. The research questions were aimed at answering what institutions existed, to analyze the qualitative aspects of the institutions and try to answer how they may have influenced the actions of the Malmö diskont management. The results show that institutions at the time both influenced and paved the way for the dubious management of the bank in its last years. Sometimes, institutions widened the perceived area of discretion; at others, it curtailed the freedom of action to such an extent that the rules of the institutional framework became virtually unmanageable. The broader contribution of my research is to add to the theory of financial crises, how both explicit and implicit rules of the game contribute to crises.</p>

Thèse-Toulouse. / At head of title: Essai de synthèse professionnelle.

Thesis--University of Michigan. / Typewritten. Bibliography: leaves [350]-373.

<p> Long run economic growth potential depends on the increase in the efficiency of resource utilization in the economy through improvements in the underlying technological capabilities. Recent economic growth slow-down, and in particularly the substantial decline in long-run productivity growth rates in the US, raises a question regarding the possible slowdown in the underlying technological growth. I set out to evaluate this question by examining the change in the potential social benefits from technology over the period of 1944-2000 in the US. I use knowledge spillovers generated by cohorts of patented innovations as proxy to the social benefits generated by those cohorts. These can be estimated using the distribution parameters for the number of citations received by patents in a cohort. The data for the work is a newly constructed patent citations database of all US patent data from 1920-2006 with full citations from 1947 on. </p><p> The first chapter introduces the new data and provides an in-depth analysis of the time-trend of its various statistical characteristics. The exposed non-stationary distribution parameter for the citation data impedes its use in the time-series analysis for extracting the innovative quality trend. A de-trending treatment to correct for this non-stationary behavior is proposed and applied. </p><p> The second chapter pursues the innovative quality analysis over the period. My attempts to use the Jaffe-Trajtenberg model for knowledge spillovers with the expanded data period strained some of the model's underlying assumptions to a breaking point. Instead, I introduce a new model for estimating the intensity of such spillovers (the innovative quality) based on the Log-Normal distribution of patent values as measured from their spillover effects (received citations). I compute the innovative output quality for annual cohorts of patents in narrowly defined technological fields over the period of 1937-1994. The results show a decline in the traditional mechanical and chemical technologies quality starting in the early 1960s. The modern technologies associated with electronics, ICT and medicine flourished until the early to mid 1980s,after which their quality declined as well. </p><p> The last chapter examines the evolutionary path of a transformative technology using the ICT over the period of 1944 to 1994. The analysis uses the full citation network for US patents over the period of 1947-2006 and applies network analysis techniques to identify main technological trajectories for the key technological fields comprising the ICT. The pattern of technological inflows and outflows for each cohort on the trajectory provides the evolutionary timeline and technology inter-dependencies. These demonstrate the underlying process of building the essential skills and complementary devices and techniques which took place in the first 25 years of the ICT evolutionary path. The fast pace of that evolutionary path and lack of significant gaps in the time-line suggest that even under optimal conditions of existing market demand for new technologies (e.g. defense and space), it takes a new, transformative technology close to half a century to deliver its productivity gains.</p>

<p> This dissertation shows how firm organization affected factory performance in the Russian Empire. The first chapter documents the impact of incorporation on firms' production technology and productivity. The second chapter studies the effect of a change in Russia's commercial code in 1901, a reform that improved the rights of small corporate shareholders. In the third chapter, I show how geography and legal forms of organization determined horizontal and vertical integration in the Russian cotton textile industry. The dataset at the heart of the project allows for a rare empirical study of the effect of organization on production at the factory level.</p><p> <b>Chapter 1: Factory Productivity and the Concession System of Incorporation in Late Imperial Russia, 1894-1908</b> In late Imperial Russia, long-term capital was scarce. Incorporation in the Russian Empire required a time-consuming and expensive Imperial concession, yet over four thousand Russian firms incorporated before 1914. I identify the characteristics of firms that chose to incorporate and measure the gains in productivity and growth in machine power enjoyed by corporations using a newly-constructed panel database of manufacturing enterprises I compiled from Imperial Russian factory censuses conducted in 1894, 1900, and 1908. Factories owned by corporations were larger, more productive, and grew faster. Higher productivity factories were more likely to incorporate, and after incorporating, they added machine power and became even more productive. Results from an instrumental variables regression suggest that selection into incorporation was not determined solely by productivity and could be influenced, for example, by connections to government officials. Comparing two kinds of corporations shows that firms sought not just access to stock markets but the corporate form's full set of capital advantages.</p><p> <b>Chapter 2: Shareholder Rights and Share Capital: The Effect of the 1901 Russian Corporation Reform, 1890-1905</b> The Russian 1901 corporation reform increased the rights of small shareholders and removed bankers from corporations' boards of directors. The reform affected one type of corporation (the A-Corporation) more than another type (called the Share Partnership) because one provision of the law created a loophole for Share Partnerships. I thus apply a differences-in-differences approach, studying the differences in corporations of these groups founded before vs. after the reform. The RUSCORP Database (Owen 1990) provides initial charter information from all Russian corporations and from all surviving Russian corporations in 1905. I find that, in response the reform, A-Corporations increased the par value of their shares, reduced their total capitalization, and reduced the number of shares they issued. The reform increased the cost to the firm of having small shareholders; thus, corporations affected by the reform began to resemble the more closely held Share Partnerships.</p><p> <b>Chapter 3: Vertical and Horizontal Integration in Imperial Russian Cotton Textiles, 1894-1900</b> When do firms produce their own inputs instead of purchasing them on the market? In one explanation firms engage in vertical integration to save the cost of transacting on the market, especially when markets are thinner and therefore price risk is greater (Coase 1937). On the other hand, firms that wish to vertically or horizontally integrate may be unable to do if they face financial constraints, because integration requires additional capital. In the third chapter, I find evidence for a thin markets explanation of integration within the Russian cotton textile industry in 1894 and 1900. The 1894 data provide especially rich information on firms' horizontal and vertical integration: the data list a complete description of each factory's internal activities and final products. Both vertically and horizontally integrated factories and firms were larger in terms of number of workers and tended to be located outside of European Russia, where markets were thinner. Vertically integrated firms were older, had more workers and machine power, and produced more revenue per worker given the same machine power. Corporations produced more revenue per worker than non-corporations, even controlling for vertical integration.</p><p> <b>Data Appendix: Imperial Russian Manufacturing Establishments Database: 1894, 1900, and 1908</b> The dissertation includes an appendix in which I describe the formation of a new database of manufacturing establishments in the Russian Empire based on manufacturing censuses conducted in 1894, 1900, and 1908. The database will allow for new studies of the Russian economy and of factory performance in developing economies. This appendix provides a codebook with variable definitions and a description of the censuses' sampling frame. The database matches factories over time, so I include an analysis comparing matched to unmatched factories. Finally, I describe differences in results that use the enterprise-level data and the aggregate data.</p>