This paper empirically estimates the effect of tax exemptions from the carbon tax and energy taxon emissions in Sweden. After the tax exemptions in 1992, carbon dioxide emissions from theSwedish industrial sector increased by, on average, over 34 percent, compared to a synthetic control unit constructed from a comparable group of OECD countries. The main finding is robust to various placebo tests, robustness tests and a dose-response test, suggesting that the tax exemptions are the driver of the result.

This paper aims to investigate how the domestic unemployment rate of a nation is affected by joining the European currency union and converting to the euro. This is done through the use of a synthetic control method, as well as an augmented version of the model, where I define the Euro Area countries as the treatment group, and conversion to euro as treatment. In line with the predictions of previous related theoretical frameworks such as the optimum currency area theory, the gravity theory and Matusz’s equilibrium model, the findings in this paper suggests that conversion to the euro leads to a short-term decrease in domestic unemployment. The effect is likely due to the short-term increase in trade, specifically within-union trade, that arises from joining the EMU.

In 2007, the Swedish payroll tax was reduced for youths in an attempt to suppress the perceived high unemployment among Swedish youths. The reform was rolled back later in 2016. For this period there is a rich supply of publicly available aggregated (macro) data. This thesis aims to examine: first, if the aggregated data is suitable for policy evaluation of the reform, and second, the effects of the reform introduction and repeal. This has been done by using both a conventional fixed effects model and a more unorthodox synthetic control method. Neither of the two methods could show any unbiased and consistent significant result of the treatment effects of the reform. Instead, the results of this thesis suggest that the publicly available aggregated data doesn’t contain enough information to evaluate such reforms.

To establish the economic impact of petroleum in the UK, this paper uses the synthetic control method. By constructing an artificial UK economy without oil, from the donor pool of OECD economies, it establishes the counterfactual time path of capital stock the UK would have had if it lacked the petroleum endowment. Comparing the observed time path of capital stock with its counterfactual, one can witness that the petroleum extraction has reduced the UK’s capital stock with an average of 17 % since 1970, despite the UK having arguably the best quality of institutions. Dose-response tests suggest that it is possible to attribute the impact to the petroleum production. Performed robustness and sensitivity tests together with several falsification tests show that the result is robust to alternations in the donor pool, the predictor variables and alternative explanations. The finding raises a question regarding the quality of institutions, advanced by Mehlum, Moene and Torvik and claimed that the resource curse only occurs in economies with low quality of institutions.

Throughout the last few years, Flygskam, a norm against air travel, has grown steadily in Sweden due to its emissions. Flygskam is a Swedish word referring to the shame that follows air travel since it runs counter to the norm behavior. This thesis investigates the effect of Flygskam on demand for domestic flights in Sweden using synthetic control and panel data for 2003-2019. The results indicate that Flygskam seems to affect the domestic passengers in Sweden, estimated to be approximately 22% lower in 2019 than the counterfactual, significant on a 1% level.

With the continuously growing importance of technological development and automation, it is vital to separate the wheat from the chaff and distinguish the effective automation from the lesser. Previous economic research typically investigates automation on a sector or national level. I instead focus on the micro-level effects of a specific setting by investigating the effects of introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the financial aid operation in the Swedish municipality Ronneby, initiated in 2019. Using a Synthetic Control Method (SCM) with yearly municipal level data, I find a reduction in Ronneby’s application duration for financial aid. The application duration estimates are noisy but robust, unanimous, and economically significant. I also investigate Ronneby's financial aid effects, finding no significant results. The share of households receiving aid in Ronneby displays an initial increase, followed by an equally sized fall at the end of the observation window. I conjecture that this movement could stem from the digitalized applications and a delay caused by the pandemic.

Declining fertility rates are an increasingly important topic in today’s Europe. Fertility rates play a significant role in sustaining a stable population and ensuring economic growth and innovation. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of CSOK, a Hungarian housing policy specifically aimed at increasing fertility rates. The research relies on theories such as Becker’s new home economics theory, Quantity-quality trade-off theory, and Willis’s economic theory of family. The study of housing prices and fertility is also provided to understand the relationship between housing and fertility better. The benchmark country for this thesis is Hungary. Using the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct a synthetic Hungary to match pretreatment outcomes closely. The findings of this thesis show that the policy has no positive effect on fertility rates and is inefficient in spending government resources. The study highlights the significance of governmental trust, emphasizing the importance of stable economic conditions and a family-friendly environment to effectively increase fertility rates.

States merge local governments to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of county-sized local governments reduce expenditures, and influence political outcomes. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of large local governments in Germany (districts) on public expenditures. In 2008, the German state of Saxony reduced the number of districts from 22 to 10. Average district population increased substantially from 113,000 to 290,000 inhabitants. I construct a synthetic counterfactual from states that did not merge districts for years. The results do neither show reductions in total expenditures, nor in expenditures for administration, education, and social care. There seems to be no scale effects in jurisdictions of more than 100,000 inhabitants. By contrast, I find evidence that mergers decreased the number of candidates and voter turnout in district elections while vote shares for populist right-wing parties increased.

The thesis evaluates the effect of Czech National Bank's exchange rate commit- ment on Czech sectoral exports. Thus, we show how unconventional monetary policies could affect the exports. To assess the impact of interventions, we use Synthetic Control Method. The method constructs synthetic Czech exports from data of comparable countries that were not under the policy of inter- est and compares them to observed Czech exports following the interventions. We expect a positive effect of Czech National Bank's commitment on Czech exports, because the interventions resulted in the undervaluation of koruna causing a higher demand for Czech goods abroad. Additionally, the exporters should benefit from reduced uncertainty caused by no exchange rate volatility with the euro area. The results showed a positive impact of interventions only in half of the export sectors. The positive effect of a stable exchange rate is not confirmed, because the effect on the euro area countries in some categories was smaller than for the other countries. The results for total sectoral exports were stable across model specifications and confirmed by analysis of Czech bi- lateral sectoral exports to the largest destinations. The significant contribution of this thesis is application of Synthetic Control Method on total sectoral...

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