In this dissertation, I explore the effect of tax incentives on where U.S. multinationals decide to locate their innovative activities worldwide. Research and development (R&D) tax incentives offered by foreign countries and differences between U.S. and foreign tax rates provide opportunities that may influence where multinationals decide to locate their innovative activities. Using firm-level patenting data that identifies the country-specific location of innovations from 1986 to 2000, I examine the relation between innovative activities performed in a foreign country and these tax incentives using the Heckman (1979) two step estimation approach. I find evidence that the foreign percentage of innovative activities is associated with the attractiveness of foreign R&D tax incentives and with an increase in the effect of U.S. R&D allocation rules. In addition, the results suggest that firms in excess foreign tax credit positions decrease the amount of R&D activities in a foreign location with increased foreign tax rates, consistent with income shifting incentives. In contrast, I find that the firms in deficit foreign tax credit positions increase their foreign R&D activities with increasing foreign tax rates. This study is the first to examine and provide evidence of the influence of foreign R&D tax incentives and income shifting incentives on a U.S. multinational’s decision on where to locate R&D activities.

Congestion on the road is identified as a severe threat to nations’ economy. To address this problem, in the past the capacity of existing infrastructure is increased by building new roads. But as history has shown, it is not only an expensive and unsustainable, but also not an efficient way of dealing with this problem. Alternatively, by identifying underutilized links, for example, in the form of parallel routes, the already existing infrastructure can often be used more efficient. This thesis focuses on the development of a framework to simulate re-routing incentives to enable an improved travel corridor performance. Thus, the effects of providing traveler information and tendering mometary incentives on a concidor’s traffic flow are investigated. The aim is to show that by changing the route choice behavior of a certain percentage of the fleet, the overall performance of the existing corridor can be increased. By using the microscopic traffic simulation tool VISSIM in combination with dynamic traffic modeling, numerous scenarios are simulated. By gradually increasing the amount of users who get access to the incentive scheme, the impacts of the penetration get analyzed as well. Based on a network stretch located in California, United States, the simulation model is developed. Using this model, three different scenarios are investigated in detail: a No Incident scenario, a Construction Work scenario and an Accident scenario. Finally, a comprehensive analysis of the simulation results takes place. It mainly focuses on the indicator travel time to discuss the impacts on the corridor performance. Interpreting the achieved simulation results, it can be stated that already small penetration rates have the potential for a significant increase of the corridor performance. To be able to optimize the corridor’s performance, free capacity on detours – especially  at bottlenecks like ramps – has to be available. Nevertheless, in case of high penetration rates, straightforward broadcasting of incentives is not an option.

Electricity accounts for much of the primary energy used in China, and more thanthree-quarter of the total electricity is generated by coal combustion. Coal burningcombined with flue gas cleaning system generates large quantity of coal combustionproducts (CCPs), which has caused significant environmental and economic burden tothe economy, ecology and society. Of great importance are thus different applicationswhich contribute to the increased use of CCPs. This thesis looks at an overview ofCCPs production and utilization all around the world and investigates current CCPsapplications as well as potential technically sound and economically justifiedtechnologies. Results of this thesis show that CCPs utilization rate in differentcountries varies widely from 13% to 97%. Worldwide, a significant proportion ofCCPs from the main producers, e.g. China, the United States and India, is still beingdisposed off, resulting in a low-level of overall utilization of these products. It isevident that the amount of CCPs produced substantially exceeds consumptionsbecause of various existing obstacles and limitations. In order to formulate effectiveapproaches, identifying challenges to increased use of CCPs is of great weight. The aimof this thesis is to analyze current and potential utilizations of CCPs and morespecifically address factors that inhibit or promote the use of CCPs from coal-firedpower plants in China. Savings of natural resources, energy, emissions of pollutants, GHG emissions anduseful land were found as the major incentives for CCPs utilization. In China, a ban ofsolid clay bricks was also found to be a very powerful measure to stimulate thedevelopment of other by-product based wall materials while saving useful land andprotecting the environment. However, this strong support from the government hasnot been fully implemented, which seriously hampered CCPs uses. Results presentedin this thesis also show that high transportation cost of low unit-value CCPs,competition from available natural materials and spatial variation in supply-demandposes three of the most important barriers to the increased use of CCPs in China.Industrial organizations with assistances from the government have shown to be offundamental importance for formulating approaches to take in overcoming thebarriers. This thesis emphasized that transforming laboratory- and pilot-scale technologies intocommercial productivity is of the highest priority for increased use of CCPs. Aconceptual model of CCPs Eco-Industry Park (EIP) as a potential effective solutionwas proposed. Mutual economic and environmental benefits can be achieved throughthe collaboration between different industries in the CCPs EIP. And other feasiblerecommendations of initiatives from both the government and industries were alsodiscussed.

In this dissertation, I explore the effect of tax incentives on where U.S. multinationals decide to locate their innovative activities worldwide. Research and development (R&D) tax incentives offered by foreign countries and differences between U.S. and foreign tax rates provide opportunities that may influence where multinationals decide to locate their innovative activities. Using firm-level patenting data that identifies the country-specific location of innovations from 1986 to 2000, I examine the relation between innovative activities performed in a foreign country and these tax incentives using the Heckman (1979) two step estimation approach. I find evidence that the foreign percentage of innovative activities is associated with the attractiveness of foreign R&D tax incentives and with an increase in the effect of U.S. R&D allocation rules. In addition, the results suggest that firms in excess foreign tax credit positions decrease the amount of R&D activities in a foreign location with increased foreign tax rates, consistent with income shifting incentives. In contrast, I find that the firms in deficit foreign tax credit positions increase their foreign R&D activities with increasing foreign tax rates. This study is the first to examine and provide evidence of the influence of foreign R&D tax incentives and income shifting incentives on a U.S. multinational’s decision on where to locate R&D activities.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding about why Swedish banks choose to work and report CSR and also analyze differences and similarities between two banks. Research question: Why do Swedish companies within the financial sector choose to report and work with Corporate Social Responsibility? The major incentives to work and report CSR are because it benefits bank´s businesses, which is driven by stakeholders. Stakeholder pressure is also an important incentive, especially pressure from customers and employees. The incentives that differed between the two banks were morality of the business leader, society and the priority of stakeholders. The incentives that we could not support were guidelines and competitors-

There seems to be a gap in previous literature where economists and social scientists do not focus on factors driving emigration of health professionals between developed coun-tries. Although, there is a lot of literature that discusses emigration of health profession-als from developing towards developed countries, there are few previous studies of health professional emigration between developed to developed countries. This paper examines and analyzes factors which might be of importance in determining the direc-tion of emigration of health professionals between developed countries. The concept of health professionals in our study contains people with more than 3 years of education within the health and social welfare sector, not referring to any particular occupation such as nurses, doctors, dentist etc; or whether they are specialized in any area. This pa-per analyses factors that affect emigration of Swedish health professionals, using eco-nomic and social variables in a structured regression model. The results indicate that the percentage of Swedish health professionals is directly affected by factors of destination countries such as geographical proximity, GDP(PPP) per capita, income tax rate and co-workers encouraging development.

According to statistics by the Council of Taiwan, the fertility rate in Taiwan is the world's lowest in 2010. The average number of babies born to women of childbearing age life is 0.9 people. In other words, the average number of children per woman is less than 1. In 2023 Taiwan will enter a negative population growth. Taiwan's population structure becomes a declining birthrate, aging society.The future workforce reduction will greatly affect the competitiveness of Taiwan. The most important factor of decreasing fertility in Taiwan is economics.The majority of people think that raising children has become a heavy burden.Except for a few women, due to personal career planning, work and other factors not yet fertility or infertility .The majority of women still want to have her own children.The most people's attitude of giving birth is reserved because of high unemployment rate ,unsound preschool education system and little child-care subsidy . In the empirical study found that there is no relationship between the fertility rates and the amount of maternity allowance.That is maternity grant can not increase fertility rate. If maternity benefits can not be improved the fertility rate,the fertility incentives of tax breaks are smaller to people.There are some shortcomings of tax incentives for increase the birth,such as revenue loss,tax fairness and so on. It is also possible to increase the birth rate had no significant improvement. The government uses tax benefits to increase fertility rate depending on revenue loss and population growth . The amount and range of tax incentives should be calculated carefully in order to make a balance between the revenue loss and population growth.

Nowadays financial fraud scheme become more and more prevalent in public-traded companies in western and oriental countries. Many finance-related literatures realize and put stress on the importance of corporate governance. In this study, we would like to explore the relationship between audit committee and CEO compensation and equity incentives. We use multiple regression as methodology, take the public companies in technological field in Taiwan as sample from 2005 to 2010. We discover that, there is a positive relationship between the ratio of the number of independent directors divided by the audit committee members and the CEO compensation; there is no significant relationship between the ratio of the number of independent directors also serve as CEO directors in other firms divided by the audit committee members and the CEO compensation; there is a negative relationship between the ratio of the number of financial-accounting expertise divided by the audit committee members and the CEO compensation. And with regard to the equity incentives, there is no significant relationship between the ratio of the number of independent directors divided by the audit committee members, the ratio of the number of independent directors also serve as CEO directors in other firms divided by the audit committee members, the ratio of the number of financial-accounting expertise divided by the audit committee members and equity incentives.

<p>There seems to be a gap in previous literature where economists and social scientists do not focus on factors driving emigration of health professionals between developed coun-tries. Although, there is a lot of literature that discusses emigration of health profession-als from developing towards developed countries, there are few previous studies of health professional emigration between developed to developed countries. This paper examines and analyzes factors which might be of importance in determining the direc-tion of emigration of health professionals between developed countries. The concept of health professionals in our study contains people with more than 3 years of education within the health and social welfare sector, not referring to any particular occupation such as nurses, doctors, dentist etc; or whether they are specialized in any area. This pa-per analyses factors that affect emigration of Swedish health professionals, using eco-nomic and social variables in a structured regression model. The results indicate that the percentage of Swedish health professionals is directly affected by factors of destination countries such as geographical proximity, GDP(PPP) per capita, income tax rate and co-workers encouraging development.</p>

Thesis supervisor: B Ravikumar. Includes bibliographic references (p. 132-135).