Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2005.

Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2006.

During the first decades of the post-war era, Sweden experienced a rapid increase in labour immigration. Many of these migrants found employment in the industrial sector, where they became concentrated. This concentration varied between different industries, but was amongst the highest in the metal and engineering industries. The aim of the thesis is to explain why migrant workers were concentrated in the Swedish metal and engineering industries during the post-war period, circa 1946-67. For this aim the thesis uses case studies, one on the regional level and another at the company level, in order to investigate and differentiate between different explanations. A varied set of different direct, as well as underlying causes and circumstances have been suggested in previous research to explain this uneven distribution of migrant workers on the labour market. Different explanations arising from these perspectives have been used in prior research with some success, but they rarely confront explanations from other perspectives, thus creating different narratives driven by different circumstances, causes, processes and intentions. The ambition of this thesis has been to seek explanations for a complex and changing historical process in post-war Sweden. In order to study this, explanations from previous research have been used to find the reasons and causes behind the concentration of foreign workers in the metal and engineering industries during the post-war era. At the same time, the results of these empirical studies are used to problematize and question these established explanations. The results have led to a somewhat different picture of the circumstances and reasons that shaped the labour immigration and the distribution of foreign employees on the Swedish labour market during the post-war period. The thesis particularly stresses that the possibilities and capabilities of the employers had a significant impact on the distribution of foreign workers.

The production of meat has risen dramatically during the past decades. This process, generally referred to as the Livestock Revolution, particularly includes so called “developing countries”, hosting the most intensive augmentation of both production and consumption. As agricultural activities often are performed by small-scale farmers in these countries, the principal question for this study has been how family farmers are affected by the Livestock Revolution. This study approaches the Livestock Revolution in Brazil, the world’s biggest national exporter of meats and animal feeds, from the small-scale farmer perspective. Drawing on a case study of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, it is argued that family farmers experience multi-level marginalization. Smallholders of pork and poultry face direct marginalization through vertical integration with the large-scale meat processors (the agribusiness). Other family farmers experience marginalization through the actual exclusion from ‘integration’, as the combined corporate forces of agribusiness and supermarket chains control the principal distributive channels. Small-scale farmers also face indirect marginalization as the increasing production of soybeans (used as animal feeds) and large-scale cattle raising create an unfortunate ‘competition for arable land’. Overall, the case study seems to reflect a national tendency, in which the Livestock Revolution intensifies the polarization of the agrarian community in Brazil, thus creating parallel patterns of prosperity for the agribusiness and marginalization for the small-scale farmers. As the Food Regime analysis aims to approach the global political economy by analysing agri-food structures, this theoretical approach has been used to contextualize the case of Livestock Revolution in Brazil. From this viewpoint, the Livestock Revolution constitutes an explicit expression of a corporate Food Regime, increasing the power of private companies at the expense of family farmers. However, the Food Regime analysis also identifies divergent patterns of this Third Food Regime, in which the corporate discourse is being challenged by an alternative paradigm of food and agriculture. The marginalization of farmers in rural Brazil has indeed provoked emancipatory responses, including alternative patterns of production and distribution, as well as direct confrontations such as land occupations. This ‘resistance from the margins’ accentuates the conflict between contrasting visions for food and agriculture, apparently embedded in the Food Regime. The farmers’ emancipation is therefore somewhat determined by the rather uncertain progress of the Third Food Regime.

The CHT peace accord signed between the Government of Bangladesh and the PCJSS (Parbatya Chattyagram Jana Sanhati Samiti) in 1997 which recognized the re-establishment of the rights of indigenous people with the formation of local and regional councils as controlling and supervisory bodies over land and land management, law and order, civil administration, development programs; food, health, education, water and sanitation, forest and environment and many more. After more than a decade of signing the peace accord, it did not implement as historically the people are exploited. Human rights have been severely violated in the region for many years of the peace accord though the area is economically sound. In relating to the peace accord, the main argument of this thesis is to present the nature of the exclusion, deprivation, protect and prospects, economic rights of the ‘adivasi’ people especially Chakma in the CHTs in food and social security, health, water and sanitation, education and income via social policy perspective through using both of qualitative and quantitative method. In concerning to the objectives, the study has exposed that the income of the Chakma people in Sonai and Mayni is lower than the rest of the people of the country. They excluded from social safety net program and they have lack of social security. The study has also evidenced that the people have no access to safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation. They live in the fragile houses where have no any necessary household chores or furniture. In comparing to the education of the country, their literacy rate is lower than the mainstream people. In the Sonai and Mayni, health related service providing quality is not so good. The indigenous people need more care and the ‘social policy’ perspective has helped to play vital role in such situation.

One fundamental point of departure for this thesis is the importance of addressing all three basic economic research questions: what is produced, with what and for whom and including them in the discussion regarding long-term macroeconomic performance. This could also be stated as that a consistent historical national accounts approach where both aspects of production and distribution are included can significantly enhance the research on macroeconomic historical issues. Built upon this foundation, the objective of this thesis is twofold. To begin with, the objective includes the broadening of the empirical database of the Swedish historical national accounts (SHNA) with accounts for the process involving the horizontal distribution of income. The second objective of this thesis consists of conducting analyses of the Swedish macroeconomic devel­opment using the extended database of the SHNA. An important aspect of the analytical objective involves the exploration of methods that had not widely been applied in Swedish economic historical research. Thus, great emphasis is placed on the methodology used in the analyses of macroeconomic development. These two main objectives forni the disposition of the thesis. The first empirical part consists of work with income accounts in the SHNA. This work has resulted in the establishment of a set of income accounts concur­ring with the procedure recommended in the contemporary national accounting system. In the second part of the thesis, selected macroeconomic issues are examined using the extended SHNA database. The first analysis consists of a closer examination of the presence of periodization patterns in Swedish growth and structural change. In this chapter an analysis based on structural time series models is applied to the SHNA series. The main results of this chapter is that the time series on growth and structural change reveal a pattern that not unconditionally is consistent with the prevailing periodisation pattern recognised in Swedish economic-historical research. Instead, the development pattern reveals features found in international research. The next analysis is concerned with the role of specific institutions for contributing to the slow-down in growth that occurred from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In this chapter the importance of the corporate tax system, investment funds and the public pension funds for the efficiency of the resource alloca­tion process is examined. The hypothesis that is examined is that these institutional arrangements altered the distribution of income in such a way that the investment allocation was disturbed and thereby leading to ineffi­ciencies that affected long-term growth negatively. This hypothesis is supported by empirical evidence on changes in the income distribution and changes in long-term rates of growth and structural change. Thus, the investigated institutional arrangements to a certain extent had a negative effect on the Swedish economic per­formance during the 1960s to the 1980s. In the final analytical chapter, the objective is mainly methodological. Here, the focus is on the potential application of CGE-models as a tool for examining Swedish macroeconomic history. A fairly straightforward CGE-model is formulated for the period 1910 to 1930 and estimated using the broadened SHNA. The predic­tions of the model are evaluated against the actual historical development in order to assess the performance of the model. As the model formulated in this chapter generates accurate prediction of the main macroeconomic indicators, it is subsequently used in a counterfactual analysis of the impact of total factor productivity growth on the overall growth performance. In summary, the thesis demonstrates that much can be achieved in the research on the Swedish macroeco­nomic development by utilizing new theoretical approaches and applying state of the art analysis methods as a complement to the structural analytical research that has been conducted previously. However, much research is still required, especially on the improvement of the macroeconomic database where one priority is to create detailed and consistent input-output tables and social accounting matrices. / digitalisering@umu

Titel: Kan Bitcoin bli framtidens betalningsmedel i utvecklingsländer? Författare: Isak Bengtsson och Gustaf Starbrant Bakgrund och problemdiskussion: I utvecklingsländer finns det betydande grupper människor som inte har tillgång till ett fungerande bankkonto. Detta skapar problem i form av finansiellt utanförskap för vissa befolkningsgrupper. Bitcoin är en digital valuta som alla människor i teorin skulle kunna få tillgång till, med en mobiltelefon med nätverksuppkoppling som enda krav. Därigenom skulle fler människor i utvecklingsländer ha tillgång till fungerande betalningsmöjligheter och inte utsättas för finansiellt utanförskap. Forskningsfråga: Vilka möjligheter samt risker finns avseende att införa Bitcoin som betalningsmedel i utvecklingsländer? Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka och analysera möjligheter samt risker avseende införandet av Bitcoin som betalningsmedel i utvecklingsländer. Metod: Genom en abduktiv ansats och en kvalitativ metodik har vi sammanfattat resonemang, argument och forskning kring Bitcoin. Material har samlats in genom tidigare forskning och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Referensram: Bitcoin och blockkedjetekniken presenteras men även Bitcoin som valuta och dess möjligheter och risker. Teorierna förtroendeteori och penningteori belyses också. Dessa utgör grundstenar och används som ett analysverktyg i uppsatsen. Empiri: Vårt empiriska undersökningsområde innefattar personer med kunskap om Bitcoin och dess underliggande teknik, blockkedjetekniken. Insamlandet av det empiriska materialet skedde genom sex semistrukturerade intervjuer. Analys och slutsatser: Bitcoin är den största digitala valutan i dagsläget och erbjuder stora möjligheter generellt. Det finns dock begränsningar, till exempel skalningsproblematik och deflation, som hade gjort det svårt för en implementering som valuta i utvecklingsländer. Däremot innehar blockkedjetekniken stor potential att förändra infrastrukturen för betalningar. Nyckelord: Betalningsmedel, Bitcoin, blockkedjetekniken, digital valuta, möjligheter, risker, utvecklingsländer

This study explores the increasingly popular government practice of issuing green bonds. By interviewing individuals involved in the development of the Swedish green government bond issued in 2020, and examining key documents, it provides an in-depth understanding of the motivations driving a government to issue a green bond. The empirical analysis shows that the Swedish government did not issue the green bond to finance green investments, but to promote the green bond market, communicate what it was already doing in terms of environmental investments, help investors attain more sustainable portfolios and strengthen the Swedish government as a bond issuer. While the political driving force behind the green government bond was the Green Party, it was strongly supported by segments of the financial sector. The main criticism came from authorities within the government itself. Even though the proponents of the green government bond shared a concern about the environment, it was not clear how this policy would ultimately contribute to the green transition. This analysis suggest that it is more appropriate to consider it as a form of industrial policy for supporting the sustainable finance industry. This is the first in-depth case study conducted on a green government bond and thus contributes to a new research topic. It also contributes to the literature on Sustainable Finance and Investment and green bonds more generally. Furthermore, it contributes to research on government debt policy and the political economy of the green transition.

The thesis studies the Swedish government policy of freight transports during a period ofstructural change since the 1920s. The focus is on the 1963 Transport Act, which introduced amore market-oriented approach. The views of the trade unions during this process areanalysed in more detail. Frequent financial problems of the railways were the main driverbehind different policy decisions in the Swedish Parliament, such as the nationalisation in1939, tightened quantity control of road freight transports, as well as the liberalisation in 1963and its abrupt cancellation 5 years later. No policy change was implemented without thesupport of Statens Järnvägar, the state-owned railway. Unions were sceptical to theliberalisation programme and preferred varying degrees of regulation and planning, althoughstated in general terms. They also agreed on the need for quantity control for most of theperiod, but for different reasons. After supporting Transport workers resistance toliberalisation of quantity control in the late 1940s, LO, the peak organisation, became morepositive in the 1960s, which created a split between the unions. As the problems for therailways deepened later, LO joined the Railway workers in support for rigorous transportplanning, which was fiercely resisted by the Transport Workers, which further increased therift.