The internet has provided us with a lot of things. One major thing is the convenience of buying goods online and get them delivered to us. Not only does the internet contain everything one might desire, but also where one can acquire it for the lowest possible price. In this thesis, this growing phenomenon, called e-commerce, is empirically studied. The main purpose is to examine the effect of e-commerce on the retail market in Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway and Denmark). The thesis includes fixed and random effects models that describe the effect of e-commerce on the number of offline enterprises and fixed effect models that describes the effect of e-commerce on the average size of offline enterprises. According to earlier studies on this matter, e-commerce has mostly had a negative effect on the number of enterprises in the offline retail sector. The results differ, however, across the subsectors within retail. This is shown, for example, by Goldmanis et al. (2010). They studied the effect of e-commerce on different offline enterprises, categorised by their size, and found that e-commerce has a negative effect on smaller firms and a non-existent or even positive effect on bigger firms. Some of the results in this thesis are in line with these findings, while in some cases they are not. When using regional fixed or random effects only, it shows that e-commerce has a negative effect on the number of offline enterprises, and a positive effect on the average size of offline enterprises. The significance of e-commerce does, however, disappear when each year is isolated with year fixed effects. The results also suggest that the effect of e-commerce differs across the three countries included in the study.

This thesis examines how employment security, that is employment protection legislation, unemployment benefit and trade union density, affects unemployment in the OECD countries. The theoretical framework suggests that employment protection can have both positive and negative effects on unemployment depending on whether the effect of job destruction or job creation is larger. By using two fixed effects models with different measurements of unemployment as dependent variables, the result show that employment protection legislation decreases unemployment while trade union density increases unemployment. However, unemployment benefits do not show any significant effect on unemployment. The results are not in line with the features of the increasingly used flexicurity model, that is possibly because flexicurity may not be applicable in all countries due to differences in labour market structures and cultural differences.

The Austrian business cycle theory suggest that monetary policies can change relative prices in the economy, leadings to unsustainable changes in the structure of production and ultimately decreasing efficiency as the structure of production corrects. This paper uses VAR and VEC estimations with Impulse Response Functions to extract the impact of Japanese monetary policies on domestic structure of production, as defined in the Austrian capital theory, between the years 1983 and 2017. The measures of stages of production is calculated in similar manner as previous research by Lester & Wolff (2013). This means that early and late stage indexes of producer prices and production is normalized by intermediate stage indexes of producer prices and production. The findings are mixed between the different approaches utilized to capture the stance of monetary policies. However, the results suggest that the short-term target Policy rate of the Bank of Japan have had a negative correlation with early- and late stage production relative to intermediate production, which is reasonably in line with the conventional version of the Austrian business cycle theory.

This study examines the costs in terms of lost revenues inflicted upon the vendace fishing industry by increased seal predation in the Bothnian Bay between the years of 2008 and 2017. A partial bioeconomic model is used to estimate the costs of predation, where a constant stock management type is assumed. The results show that the average predation cost is approximately 4500 SEK per ringed seal and 2300 SEK per grey seal. A 10 percent increase in the ringed seal population is estimated to result in 7,1 million SEK in lost revenues on average, which would constitute 15 percent of the total average revenue of the vendace fishing industry. A 10 percent increase in the grey seal population would on average result in 482 thousand SEK in lost revenues. The predation costs are considered to be economically large, but the actual estimates should be taken lightly due to uncertainty in the underlying data.

Sweden faces increasing pressures on health funding. Total expenditure on health care currently accounts for about 10.92% of GDP, which suggests an increase of about twofold over the last five decades. This paper examines the short-run and long-run relationship between income and health care expenditure in Sweden during the period 1980–2017. The study focused on the differences between short- and long-term elasticities. Consistent with the conventional findings, the income elasticity for health care is found to be greater than one, suggesting that health care is a luxury good in Sweden. Additionally, the age structure variable is found to have a significant positive impact on health care expenditure. Finally, the importance of another non-income variable, relative price, is also confirmed, an increase in relative price is associated with lower quantity of health care expenditure.

Den traditionella utgångspunkten i analyser och beräkningar av den reala jämviktsväxelkursen mellan olika valutor är att den följer teorin om köpkraftsparitet. Studier har dock visat att teorin om köpkraftsparitet inte håller och att den reala jämviktsväxelkursen istället bestäms av olika bestämningsfaktorer. Denna upptäckt har lett till att alternativa tillvägagångssätt tagits fram för att analysera och beräkna den reala jämviktsväxelkursen vilka bygger på ett långsiktigt samband mellan den reala växelkursen och dessa bestämningsfaktorer. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån detta undersöka vad som bestämmer den reala jämviktsväxelkursen mellan den svenska kronan och euron. Genom Johansens kointegrationstest kunde denna studie visa på ett långsiktigt samband mellan den bilaterala reala växelkursen mellan den svenska kronan och euron och bestämningsfaktorerna; produktivitetsskillnader mellan internationellt handelsbara varor samt internationellt icke-handelsbara varor i Sverige relativt till i euroområdet, Sveriges nettoutlandsställning, Sveriges grad av öppenhet relativt euroområdet, skillnaden i BNP per capita mellan Sverige och euroområdet samt skillnaden i realräntan mellan de två. Samtliga bestämningsfaktorer, förutom skillnaden i BNP per capita, uppvisade dessutom de effekter på den reala växelkursen som var förväntade utifrån ekonomisk teori.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The idea behind this bachelor thesis comes from findings of a study made by L. M. Ball & Mazumder (2011). After 2008, the unemployment rate in the U.S started to rise which according to predictions from the Phillips inflation should turn into deflation. Although, the U.S faced a different outcome. The results from their study indicated that the Phillips curve has been performing poorly after the Great Recession and they stated that the credibility of the Phillips curve can be questioned. This study aims to analyze the relationship between the unemployment rate and inflation, known as the Phillips curve, in eight European countries. It further aims to investigate if the Great Recession had any effect on the relationship. This is made by using annual data over the time period of 2000-2017. The results show that there exist country-specific differences in four out of the eight countries included in the study. It also shows that the relationship between unemployment and inflation is weakest in Italy and strongest in France. Furthermore, the study could show that the relationship had become stronger after the Great Recession in France, Finland, and Italy.