This study analyzes the relationship between self-employment, corruption, and property rights in 30 European countries, including 11 Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) economies, across the two decades of 1996–2016. In general, relatively little research has focused on the relationship between entrepreneurship and the protection of property rights. Furthermore, past findings show that corruption may have both negative and positive effects on the level of entrepreneurial activity, either “greasing” or “sanding” the wheels for entrepreneurship. Overall, research on how the informal institution corruption and the formal institution property rights are linked to entrepreneurship in post-socialist/transition economies has been limited. We find that stronger protection of property rights increases self-employment ratios, both in Europe in general and in CEE economies. The relationship between self-employment and the control of corruption is not significant. We conclude that neither higher nor lower levels of corruption control affect the share of self-employment. In comparative perspective, the ratio of self-employment in the group of CEE economies does not respond differently to these two key institutions.

This study uses a time-varying model that provides new evidence on the changing relationship between domestic overnight stays of selected winter sport destinations and natural snow conditions. A Kalman filter method combined with wavelet-based multiresolution analysis (MRA) is employed to investigate the relationships in intervals between 2 and 4 and up to 16-32 months. The model is applied to domestic overnight stays for selected mountain regions in Sweden (Dalarna and Jämtland), Norway (Buskerud, Hedmark, Hordaland and Oppland) and Austria (Salzburg and Tyrol). Results show that the sensitivity of domestic overnight stays on natural snow conditions varies markedly depending on location, time period and frequency band window used in the estimation. The medium-run relation for Tyrol and Salzburg is significantly declining over time, while in Norway and Sweden, the same relationship is generally volatile and not significant at the end of the sample period. In the short run, none of the regions exhibits a link between domestic overnight stays and snow depth fluctuations.

In 1771, the first Swedish academic thesis on bankruptcy and insolvency was defended by Carl Bergström at Uppsala University. In this and other contemporary Swedish publications on the topic, shortcomings in the debtor’s character including gambling, dishonesty, fraudulent behaviour and a disposition for speculation were mentioned as major causes for bankruptcies. The idea that a debtor also was a swindler, and should be severely punished, was spread by Italian merchants to, above all, France, Spain, England and Germany. The moralising causal explanation for bankruptcy can be questioned from a social science research perspective. Based on modern literature, we can see many reasons for why a trader, shopkeeper or an artisan had to file for bankruptcy. An economic shock is an event that occurs outside of an economy and produces significant change within an economy.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Swedish credit market was still dominated by private financial networks and by a private supply of capital. Banks, discounts and other public financial institutions only played minor roles as financers of trade and industry. In spite of these circumstances private financial networks were embedded in public financial institutions and bankruptcy legislation. In this chapter, the authors describe the development of the bankruptcy system in Sweden between 1734 and 1849, placed in a European perspective. The Roman bankruptcy legislation ceased to function in conjunction with the disintegration of the Empire and its institutions. For a long time thereafter, a long-standing bankruptcy system was missing in Europe. The Germanic tribes brought their own right-system into the Roman territories of Gaul, Italy and Spain, where they often lived alongside the older, Romanized population and its laws.

Objectives: The knowledge of the effects of white-collar crimes is incomplete. In the article, we operationalize white-collar crimes as bankruptcy frauds. Economic models maintain that interlinkages between firms may give ‘domino effects’: bankruptcy events could lead to ‘bankruptcy chains’ in which a bankruptcy spreads to other firms. Analogously, criminologists assert that social and economic networks can be a major source of fraud diffusion, with the potential to drive other firms bankrupt. Recent empirical results show that crimes may have detrimental and even asymmetric (nonlinear) effects on economic activity. We analyze the diffusion and the aggregate development of bankruptcy frauds in Sweden over nearly two hundred years, specifically focusing on the relationship between bankruptcy frauds and the bankruptcy volume. We also consider linkages between bankruptcy frauds, bankruptcies, and the macroeconomic cycle. Methods: We use long, aggregate time series, collected from several different historical and contemporary sources. Applying the recently developed cointegrating nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, we investigate whether the bankruptcy volume reacts asymmetrically to increases and decreases in bankruptcy frauds, both in the short and the long run. Results: Bankruptcy frauds reveal a causal effect on bankruptcies, showing an asymmetric (nonlinear) diffusion effect from economic frauds to the bankruptcy volume. Increases in bankruptcy frauds have a positive and significant effect on the bankruptcy volume. However, decreases in bankruptcy frauds show no significant effect. No causal relationship between the macroeconomic cycle and bankruptcy frauds is found. Conclusions: Our data and research approach demonstrate how previously generated hypotheses in both criminology and economic research on the relationship between (economic) crimes, economic activity, and the diffusion of white-collar crime can be tested at an aggregate level. © 2018 The Author(s)

Uppsatsen redogör för förklaringar till företagsdödlighet i såväl offentliga utredningar som inom ekonomisk och sociologisk forskning och teoribildning. Två fundamentalt olika föreställningar om hur och varför företag beter sig på ett visst sätt har dominerat de flesta studier. Ett perspektiv förutsätter en central roll för företagsledningens beslutsfattande och kompetens. Ett andra och motsatt perspektiv ser företags beteenden bestämda av externa krafter över vilka företagsledningen saknar kontroll. De olika föreställningarna påverkar resultat och slutsatser inom forskningen och har också betydelse för utformningen av den ekonomiska politiken.

We analyse firm survival and focus on several levels of analysis (both firm level and macro-level). We employ a unique longitudinal data set, recorded at the firm-level and covering nine complete entry cohorts of Swedish companies. The companies were founded between 1899 and 1992, and each firm is followed over nearly a decade. We adopt the semi-parametric complementary log-log (cloglog) model. The main novelty of our approach is that, unlike extant studies so far, we are able to distinguish between the impact on the hazard rate of founding conditions and contemporaneous, post-entry conditions. Using our new approach we test several hypotheses derived from the Industrial Organization and Organizational Ecology literatures.