The purpose of this master’s thesis was to investigate how museum stores are governed, with a focus on museum stores situated in museums in Stockholm and on museums stores which are part of a government agency. The purpose was also to investigate the relationship between the museum and the consumption in the museum store in general.  The thesis shows that museum stores which are part of a government agency are governed by their appropriation directions, including the direction that the museum stores must be fully financed. However, the museum stores are also influenced by guidelines that have not been written down, expectations from the museum and from museum patrons. Other factors not within the control of the museum were also of importance, and could limit the choices available for the museum store managers as well as be a source of inspiration. The result also shows that the museum store and the consumption it’s associated with, is seen as either a threat, a necessity or a possibility: The museum store is often viewed as being at odds with the main role of museums in general, while also being considered a necessity, helping the museum to meet the patron’s expectations. In some cases the museum could benefit from the museum store, due to the stores’ possibility of improving upon the museum visit, or making a profit usable in other museum activities. The source material was gathered from the websites of international and national organisations within the museum field. Material was also gathered during interviews with museum store managers in Stockholm. The theory used was cultural economics and consumption studies. The method for this essay was interviews, minor field studies, linguistic analysis. The focus of this essay was how the museum store is governed. The essay does not, for example, research how the museum visitors or museum patrons experienced the shop. This is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies

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This dissertation is devoted to the analysis of various aspects of inefficiency in the political economy. It consists of four self-containing theoretical essays. The first two chapters deal with the interplay between inefficiency and commitment. Chapter 1 studies the problem of commitment in autocratic regimes and its implications for growth. Chapter 2 argues that the absence of commitment undermines the validity of the Coase theorem. The next two chapters address alternative sources of inefficiency, abstracting from commitment-related problems. Chapter 3 discusses inefficiencies arising in organizations whose members possess veto power and suggests a way of mitigating the problem. Finally, Chapter 4 analyzes the impact of demand linkages on the efficiency of lobbying for trade policy. Chapter 1. “Autocracy, Devolution and Growth” Some autocracies have sustained high economic growth for many decades; others have stagnated at low levels of production. Paradoxically, the stagnating autocracies appear to possess more natural resources and be more resistant to political change than the growing autocracies. The paper argues that the scope for capital accumulation and growth in an autocracy is largely determined by the autocrat's incentive to cling to power. The main result of the paper is that there will be private capital accumulation only if the autocrat’s benefits from political control are not too high. The reason is that, as capital accumulates and growth slows down, the autocrat faces an increasing temptation to expropriate the capitalists. Since expropriation eliminates growth, the autocrat may voluntarily refrain from expropriating if future growth is sufficiently large; otherwise, the temptation to expropriate can only be resisted through a credible commitment, that is, by devolving some political power. For autocrats with large benefits of control, for example valuable natural resource rents, devolution of power may always be unattractive. As a result, capitalists realize that they will eventually be expropriated, and capital accumulation therefore never starts. On the other hand, autocrats with small resource rents will eventually devolve power, since this commitment is necessary to sustain growth. Therefore, capitalists are willing to start accumulating despite the autocratic regime. In other words, autocracies are vulnerable to the resource curse.   Chapter 2. “The Coase Theorem Is False” (with Tore Ellingsen) The paper provides simple and robust counterexamples to the Coase Theorem. More precisely, we show that equilibrium investments in club goods can be suboptimally small despite the presence of well-defined and perfectly protected property rights and the absence of transaction costs and informational asymmetries. The reason is that, in equilibrium, a club of owners will typically not exercise their right to exclude outsiders, preferring instead to exercise their right to sell access. As long as the club of owners does not have all the bargaining power in such ex post access negotiations, strategic non-membership provides a valuable free-riding opportunity. Chapter 3. “Club-in-the-Club: Reform under Unanimity” (with Erik Berglöf, Mike Burkart and Guido Friebel) In many organizations, decisions are taken by unanimity. We analyze a model of an organization in which members with heterogeneous productivity privately contribute to a common good. Under unanimity, the least efficient member imposes her preferred effort choice on the entire organization. In the presence of externalities and an incomplete charter, the threat of forming an “inner organization” can undermine the veto power of the less efficient members and coerce them to exert more effort. We identify the conditions under which the threat of forming an inner organization is never executed, and under which inner organizations are equilibrium outcomes, and provide a rationale for the diversity of decision rules. Chapter 4. “Protection for Sale to Oligopolists” This paper modifies Grossman and Helpman’s "Protection for Sale" model by allowing demand linkages and oligopolistic competition. It shows that increased substitutability between products weakens interest groups’ incentives to lobby. For the case of two industries it obtains a particularly simple result: the protection of the organized industry’s product falls, whereas the protection of the unorganized industry’s product increases with product substitutability. The model suggests that empirical studies of the "Protection for Sale" may overstate the lobby groups’ desire for protection. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006

Paper 1: Give More Tomorrow Many charities ask donors to commit to monthly contribution schemes. Monthly contributors give a fixed sum every month, which is automatically deducted from their bank account. These donors are the most profitable ones for a charity. On average, they give more than donors who contribute sporadically. They also facilitate the long-run financial planning of the charity, and they reduce the administrative and fundraising costs. What will influence a donor's decision to commit to a monthly contribution scheme? If the costs and benefits associated with contributing to a charity occur at different points in time, the answer will depend on the donor's inter-temporal preferences. More specifically, it will be of importance whether donors are time consistent or whether they exhibit present-biased preferences.  This paper designs and tests a fundraising strategy that allows for present-biased preferences among donors. The strategy, Give More Tomorrow, was implemented as a randomized field experiment in collaboration with a large charity. 1134 donors that make monthly contributions were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. In the first group, monthly donors were asked to increase their donation starting immediately. In the second group, monthly donors were asked to increase their donations starting two months later. Mean donations were 32 percent higher in the latter group, a highly significant difference. Donations conditional on giving were also significantly higher in the latter group. The effect of the GMT strategy is economically large and highly profitable to the charity. Paper 2: Crowding Out or Crowding In? The crowding-out hypothesis says that private givers, who are also taxpayers, will use their tax-financed donations as a substitute for their voluntary donations, thus reducing the net effectiveness of grants (Warr, 1982, 1983; Roberts, 1984; Bernheim, 1986; and Andreoni, 1988). While theory predicts a one-to-one relationship between government grants and private donations, econometric and experimental studies have found evidence of partial or no crowding out (see, e.g., Khanna et al., 1995; Payne, 1998; Khanna and Sandler, 2000; and Okten and Weisbrod, 2000). A recent contribution to this literature argues that government grants reduce the organizations' fundraising efforts, which may indirectly cause a decrease in private contributions (Andreoni and Payne, 2003). This paper employs a previously unexplored panel dataset to test whether government grants crowd out private donations to charitable organizations, controlling for changes in the organizations' fundraising behavior. The data covers all registered charitable organizations in Sweden between 1989 and 2003. We have a total of 361 organizations where the largest group is health related. The panel data allows us to control for unobserved organizational heterogeneity and time fixed effects. Furthermore, we use a 2SLS specification to control for possible endogeneity in government grants and fundraising expenditures. Complete crowding out can be strongly rejected. In the 2SLS regression, the estimated crowd-out is small and highly significant in the full sample, on average 5.0%. In the disaggregated sample, we cannot reject zero crowding out for any type of organization in the 2SLS regressions. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that organizations are net revenue maximizing, indicating that fundraising activities are efficient. Paper 3: Is Foreign Aid Paternalistic? (with Ola Granstrom and Felix Masiye) In this paper, we experimentally investigate whether donors are paternalistically altruistic when contributing to foreign aid. A paternalist may be defined as someone who advances other people's interests, such as life, health, or safety, at the expense of their liberty or autonomy. In economic theory, a donor is said to be paternalistically altruistic if he cares about a recipient's wellbeing, but does not fully respect the recipient's preferences (Pollak, 1988; Jones-Lee, 1991, 1992; Jacobsson et al., 2005). In a double-blind experiment, a subject chooses whether to make a monetary or a tied transfer (mosquito nets) to an anonymous household in Zambia. Recipients have revealed preferences for money, as their willingness to pay for mosquito nets is positive but below the market price. A monetary transfer will therefore preserve the household's preferences while a tied transfer is paternalistic. The mean donation of mosquito nets differs significantly from zero, thereby implying paternalistic preferences among donors. Paternalistic donors constitute 65 percent of the total sample, whereas purely altruistic donors constitute 15 percent. We conclude that health-focused paternalistic rather than purely altruistic preferences dominate the foreign-aid giving of individuals. Paper 4: Altruism without Borders? (with Ola Granstrom) Why do individuals contribute to foreign aid? Does the willingness to give increase the more we know about the recipients? Although there is some literature on the strategic interests of countries in providing foreign aid, (see, e.g., Alesina and Dollar, 2000) very little is yet known about which preferences guide the foreign-aid giving of individual donors. This paper experimentally tests altruism over borders. We design a cross-country dictator game where the degree of identification of the recipient is varied in four treatments: (1) anonymity, (2) photo, (3) information and (4) photo and information. In addition, questionnaire data on donor characteristics is gathered. The mean donation is 55%, which is considerably higher than in standard dictator games. In contrast to previous within-country experiments, we find no significant effect of identification on donations. Furthermore, we find that women donate significantly more than men (64 compared to 50 percent) and that those who state that aid is too large donate significantly less than those who state that aid is too small (24 compared to 67 percent). / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006 S. 5-7: Summary of Papers, S. 13-125: 4 papers

This thesis consists of four essays in economics related to the pharmaceutical market. The first essay, Pharmaceutical Pricing in a Regulated Market, compares the pricing of new pharmaceuticals in the Swedish market where prices are regulated, with the results of Lu and Comanor who studied the pricing of new pharmaceuticals in the US market. The results indicate that price regulation discourages the use of penetration strategies and decreases price competition between brand name drugs. The second essay, Innovativeness and Market Shares in the Pharmaceutical Industry, analyzes the pharmaceutical market in a model of horizontal and vertical product differentiation. The implications from the model are tested on data from the Swedish pharmaceutical market. Vertically differentiated drugs are found to gain larger market shares, command higher prices, and be less sensitive to substitutes than drugs that are only horizontally differentiated. The third essay, Generic entry before and after reference prices, examines the effect of the reference pricing system on generic entry in markets where brand name pharmaceuticals lose patent protection. The main result is that savings due to increased competition in markets affected by the reference pricing system may have been outbalanced by higher prices due to less competition in markets where the reference pricing system led to deterred entry. The fourth essay, Innovative Drugs and the Increase in Pharmaceutical Expenditures, seeks to establish the most important factors behind the growth in pharmaceutical expenditures. One important conjecture is that the change in the drug price index has little impact on the rate at which pharmaceutical expenditures grow. Instead, the introduction of new innovative drugs seems to be the most important driving force of the growth in pharmaceutical expenditures. / Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2001

For business organizations the concept of risk has always been important. Lately, this importance has been enhanced due to a number of corporate and societal circumstances. New and previously unconsidered risks are gaining increased significance in the overall risk management of many companies. This doctoral thesis takes a wide approach and examines factors relating to the evolving area of operational risk management. It focuses on risks that concern firms’ operations rather than merely financial risk exposures. The thesis consists of four empirical studies that address diverse but interrelated aspects of operational risk in Swedish industry settings. Building on four sets of independent data collections, they apply both quantitative and qualitative methods. The thesis reports results of operational risk management regarding organizational aspects, perceived challenges, the regulative environment, current societal and business trends, and various stakeholders. Issues like trust, risk perception, risk communication, corporate value, reputation, and brand value are also discussed. On the whole, the empirical findings indicate that a new risk paradigm has emerged. As society has boosted the management of various risks as a corporate responsibility, the costs of failing to manage such risks have increased substantially. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2009 Sammanfattning jämte 4 uppsatser

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2002. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. Göteborg : University, 2002.

Diss. Umeå : Univ., 2004.

This study is the first to focus primarily on the Swedish parish magasins, the country’s most widespread credit institution in the last half of the 18th, and the first part of the 19th, century. During the Early Modern Period, grain price volatility was a matter of great concern. The parish magasins were conceived as a substitute for government action intended to stabilize grain prices and offer relief in case of crop failure. The thesis analyzes the problems of harvest variability and grain price fluctuations utilizing both   theory and empirical evidence. It is concluded that market integration, especially by permitting imports, was more effective than inter-harvest storage in reducing the likelihood of high prices. Initially the peasants were sceptical of the new institution. Although the establishment of the magasins was strictly speaking voluntary, substantial hierarchical pressure was applied.  Once they had come into existence, however, the magasins evolved into a type of grain bank. The parishioners found them useful as a source of communal revenue at a time of rising need for local public expenditure for education and poor relief. In addition, the failure of the grain market to meet the needs of the peasantry created a demand for loans in kind. Although by no means ideal, in the absence of any superior institutions, the magasins provided valuable services. When improvements in both municipal finance and the functioning of the grain markets occurred in the second half of the 19th century, the magasins became obsolete. Both history and geography impact the formation of institutions. This study describes one such case of institutional development and attempts to explain why the outcome deviated from the original intention. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, 2007</p>