Economic preferences are crucial in decision making. While some preferences remain stable, changes in economic preferences have been linked to institutional and policy changes. We conduct three studies to explore the ways in which decision making might be impacted by economic preferences and underlying or changing policies. Our studies span the domains of preventative healthcare, strategic interactions, and education. Chapter 2 examines the relationship between cooperative decision making and changes in societal level institutions through a meta-meta analysis, incorporating experimental data from various previously conducted meta-analyses. We study the relationship between country or region level policy changes, as measured by economic freedom indices to experimental measures of prosocial and selfish behavior. Our results indicate a relationship between macro-level institutional changes and measures of co-operative behavior that varies based on the starting levels of economic freedom variables. This establishes a relationship between macro policies and individual behavior that suggests that governments should consider the consequences of policies on individual decision making. Chapter 3, using vignette experiments, explores how emotion reappraisal messaging interventions affect betrayal aversion and vaccine hesitancy. The measure of betrayal aversion in our study involves hesitancy in risking being betrayed in situations involving trust related to vaccines. We find that betrayal aversion is prevalent in about a third of our study participants and that two of our messaging interventions substantially reduce betrayal aversion involving vaccination decisions. Our results suggests a targeted messaging strategy for addressing a recently discovered new component of vaccine hesitancy, an important current topic in preventative healthcare. Chapter 4, introduces an active learning intervention in the form of a field experiment involving a health intervention nudge and explores its impact on class engagement and education outcomes of students. In addition, we look at the impact of the nudge on vaccination uptake among students. We find improved class engagement as well as improvement in test scores for students who had the opportunity and chose to participate in the nudge experiment. In addition, we find greater uptake of influenza vaccination, as targeted by the nudge treatment. Our results show that this effect is driven by men, with women having higher vaccination rates irrespective of the nudge treatment. JEL codes: C91, H1, 01, P5, I12, D91, A22, C93 / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation explores how policy changes in our environment, interact with our preferences and affect decision making in social decision making, healthcare and education domains. We explore macro policies designed to create country-level institutional changes, involving the legal system, monetary policy, trade and labor policy, as well as examining two individual-level interventions including targeted messaging to improve vaccination uptake, and course performance in introductory economics. These wide variety of policy interventions give us a wide spectrum of decisions to study across different domains. Chapter 2 examines the relationship between policy changes at the macro-institutional level and aggregate cooperative decision making. In this study, we establish a relationship between baseline institutional structure and changes in cooperative behavior corresponding to changes in societal level institutions. Our results suggests that current and historic societal level institutional structures should be kept in mind when designing policies. Chapter 3 explores the effect of messaging treatments targeting emotions on uptake of vaccination using a vignette experiment. Here, we study the effects on a particular emotion, betrayal aversion, which in our study, involves hesitancy related to the risk of getting betrayed in the context of vaccination. Our results suggest that a targeted messaging strategy, might prove to be effective in designing policies to improve vaccination uptake. Chapter 4 explores the impact of an active learning approach on class engagement and education outcomes of students in introductory economics. Providing students the chance to participate in a field experiment designed as a vaccination nudge, we incorporate the active learning component of the course and study the impact of participation in this active learning module. Our results suggest improved engagement and education outcomes among students who had the opportunity to participate in the experiment. Our results also suggest that proximity nudges might prove to be effective in improving vaccination uptake. We demonstrate the importance of designing context-specific policies for them to be instrumental in bringing about targeted change. At the aggregate country level, we find that similar type of policy interventions when introduced in countries with differing baseline institutional structures might lead to different results. At the individual level, we find evidence that targeted interventions does shape decisions. We find that targeted health communications messaging can lead to improvement in health behavior. We also find that introducing active learning modules improves learning outcomes among students. Taken together, the findings in this dissertation demonstrates how both economic preferences and underlying policies are important factors in decision making.

This dissertation explores the determining effects of non-economic factors on economic growth of developed versus developing nations. While earlier economic theories have traditionally focused on land, labor, capital and technology as the principle determining factors of economic growth, latter-day normative theorists demonstrated the importance of cultural forces and human capital variables on economic growth of nations. This dissertation is an extension of this emphasis put on economic growth by the latter-day normative theorists. Economic activities for developed and developing nations have been used as a proxy stock variable (for economic growth) for three points in time ? 1980, 1990 and 2000. The data for economic activities has been obtained from Jerry Dwyer?s dataset while the independent variables such as economic freedom has been obtained from the Fraser Institute and that of social capital variables have been obtained from the World Values Survey for the years 1980, 1990 and 2000. The central focus of the research has been to observe the correlations between the several components of economic freedom and social capital variables (such as trust and membership) among developed and developing nations followed by multiple regression analyses of the economic freedom and social capital variables on economic growth of developed and developing nations. The findings of this research suggest that physical capital and economic freedom and unequivocally significant determinants of economic growth in both the developed and developing nations. Trust on the other hand has been understood to be a limited variable in the way it is conceptualized in the World Values Survey. Within this limitation, ?personal trust? has been found to be declining over the years for all the nations, has very little association with membership categories over the years and is negatively correlated with economic activities/economic growth or output per worker. The impact of membership or belongingness on economic activities is very different in developed versus developing countries. Overall, this research has helped to broaden the boundaries of economic growth with the extension of sociological variables (such as trust and membership) into the field of Economics. The research has broad-based implications on the public policies of government across nations.

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This thesis tries to determine some of the driving force behind Swedish foreign direct in-vestments into the Baltic counties. The analysis is performed in three steps, first we analyze global FDI into transitional economies, and afterwards we look at Swedish FDI and com-pare it with German FDI. The determinants examined are index of economic freedom, R&D intensity, trade balance, wage level and proximity. The analyzed period is form 1995 to 2005. The analysis use data on the following transition countries Latvia, Lithuania, Esto-nia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. The results show that the determinants vary across the countries. The motives of Swedish and German investors differ. Thus, for Swedish investors R&D, economical free-dom and trade balance are the influencing factors, but for Germany only trade balance and wage level are important. The conclusion is that different determinants triggers foreign di-rect investment in transitional economies in different ways.

<p>This thesis tries to determine some of the driving force behind Swedish foreign direct in-vestments into the Baltic counties. The analysis is performed in three steps, first we analyze global FDI into transitional economies, and afterwards we look at Swedish FDI and com-pare it with German FDI. The determinants examined are index of economic freedom, R&D intensity, trade balance, wage level and proximity. The analyzed period is form 1995 to 2005. The analysis use data on the following transition countries Latvia, Lithuania, Esto-nia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. The results show that the determinants vary across the countries. The motives of Swedish and German investors differ. Thus, for Swedish investors R&D, economical free-dom and trade balance are the influencing factors, but for Germany only trade balance and wage level are important. The conclusion is that different determinants triggers foreign di-rect investment in transitional economies in different ways.</p>

In recent years corruption has come to be considered as a pervasive phenomenon, and a major obstacle in the process of economic development. However, there exist few studies that discuss the factors that cause corruption and why some countries are more corrupt than others. This research contributes to that rather scanty literature and focuses on the causes of corruption. More importantly, the study empirically investigates various causes of corruption, in particular the role of economic development, democracy and economic freedom in explaining the observed variations in corruption across countries, and the nexus between democracy and economic freedom in combating corruption. The study first tests the reliability of the recent quantitative innovations in the study of corruption in terms of the Corruption Perception Index, constructed by Transparency International. Using theoretical and empirical analysis, various hypotheses regarding corruption and its determinants are examined using panel data for 100 countries during the period 1995 to 2004. The empirical findings show that the subjective indexing process of corruption perception eventually converges to a common consensus. In evaluating the relationship between economic development and corruption, the results suggest that income per capita, education, unemployment, income inequality, economic freedom and democracy are among the factors which determine and help explain the cross-country differences in corruption. Furthermore, the assessment of the relationship between democracy and corruption shows that an ‘electoral democracy’, represented by ‘political rights’, is not in itself sufficient to reduce corruption. Instead, for low levels of corruption to exist, the presence of an advanced fully-formed mature democracy is required. A characteristic of a mature democracy is the existence of an environment where the probability of being caught, if acting corruptly, is very high. In addition, the examination of the interaction between economic freedom and democracy suggests that economic freedom reduces corruption in any political environment, and the effect is substantially larger with a high level of democracy. The interesting and important findings of the analysis indicate that there exists a non-linear relationship between corruption and the level of income as well as democracy. The findings suggest that developed countries have succeeded in controlling corruption through higher levels of economic development along with the economic and political freedoms that their peoples enjoy.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe how the factors influence the level of adaptation and standardization of a marketing strategy and subsequently analyze how the factors influence the level of adaptation and standardization of Swedish MNCs’ in the German market. The relevant factors for the decision towards standardization and adaptation are found out using a framework composed by Viswanathan &amp; Dickson (2007). The factors chosen are homogeneity of customer response to the marketing-mix, transferability of competitive advantage, homogeneity of economic freedom and decision variables.   This thesis does so in a deductive and qualitative approach using Swedish retailer Clas Ohlson as a case study. Underlying this is a contextualized and interpretivist point of view. Data was collected through focus group interviews with German and Swedish students and complemented through data mining.   An analysis of the empirical data shows a high homogeneity of customer response to the marketing-mix, the possibility of transferring the competitive advantage and a high homogeneity of economic freedom was discovered. When applying the frame of reference on the empirical data, Swedish MNCs, especially Swedish retailers, are recommended to choose a high degree of standardization for their IMS in the German market. It was discovered that the used framework does to some extent not cover a wish proposed by the German participants calling for a partial adaptation of the international marketing strategy. This disproves the assumption underlying the frame of reference as the majority of factors suggest standardization, yet from a consumer perspective, there is the wish to partially adapt. In the conclusion managerial implications, limitations and research implications are mentioned as well.

Hong Kong is considered to be the most economically free country in the world, but also has the highest amount of income inequality of any developed country. The Hong Kong government is able to sustain laissez faire policies due to its monopoly on land supply. Maintaining high property values allows the government to maximize revenue from property tax, which acts as a hidden tax. A major contributor to income inequality is the formation of oligopolies in Hong Kong that creates an anticompetitive environment. The interests of the government and oligarchs are aligned as both obtain significant portions of revenue from the property sector. As globalization makes Hong Kong even more vulnerable to external shocks, the government faces the challenges of increasing competition, diversifying its revenue streams, and closing the income gap while standing by its principles in order maintain regional competitiveness as an international business hub.

<p>This paper investigates the impact of Economic Freedom on FDI inflows to developing countries and the Middle East in particular. Four forms of Economic Freedom were tested as variables determining FDI inflow. These four variables were Freedom from Corruption, Government Size, Trade Freedom and Investment Freedom. Cross-sectional data for twelve Middle Eastern countries and forty-three other developing countries were gathered for 1995 and 2006. It was revealed that only Trade Freedom and Invest-ment Freedom were significant in both Middle East and other regions. Apart from one case, the general positive sign of the significant variables confirms our hypothesis re-garding the positive effects of these Economic Freedoms on FDI inflows. Based on these findings it can be recommended to improve the investment environment and re-duce the barriers to trade in order to attract more FDI.</p>

This paper investigates the impact of Economic Freedom on FDI inflows to developing countries and the Middle East in particular. Four forms of Economic Freedom were tested as variables determining FDI inflow. These four variables were Freedom from Corruption, Government Size, Trade Freedom and Investment Freedom. Cross-sectional data for twelve Middle Eastern countries and forty-three other developing countries were gathered for 1995 and 2006. It was revealed that only Trade Freedom and Invest-ment Freedom were significant in both Middle East and other regions. Apart from one case, the general positive sign of the significant variables confirms our hypothesis re-garding the positive effects of these Economic Freedoms on FDI inflows. Based on these findings it can be recommended to improve the investment environment and re-duce the barriers to trade in order to attract more FDI.