This paper investigates the impact of trade openness on economic growth through a panel analysis containing a set of 61 countries over 15 years. The method we use is the fixed effect regression model in Stata, to see whether openness to trade has explanatory power over GDP per capita growth. We use secondary data taken from World bank and Worldwide Governance Indicators. The data used is a panel data containing 61 countries and the period we are studying starts at 2002 and ends in 2016, a 15 years' time interval. Our empirical results suggest that openness during these years have had a small negative impact on growth, but although this, the variable does not seem to have a statistical significance upon per capita growth within this period of time. Therefore, with reference to this study we cannot see any significance of openness upon growth.

Objectives: The main objectives of the study include, to identify whether there is any direct impact of labor, capital/investment, technological advancement and institutional quality on economic growth; understanding the marginal effect of capital and technological advancement for different levels of institutional quality; determining how these relationships vary on the group of countries based on their income groups – poorer to richer.

Method: Panel data for the period 2006–2020 and 40 countries was considered for the analysis. In order to examine the relationships for all the countries, fixed effect OLS was applied. In addition, to identify the nature of the relationships for the countries based on their income group, quantile fixed effect regression was conducted. To control the time effect, the variable, year, was considered as dummy variable.

Findings: The study finds that the rate participation of the labor force negatively impacts economic growth whereas institutional quality, capital formation, and advancement of technology positively impact economic growth. The study also finds that the relationship between economic growth and labor, capital, R&D and institutional quality vary across the income group of countries. In case of the 10th quantile, that is the lowest income group countries, none of the independent variables have been found to be impacting the dependent variable, economic growth. This statement has been found true for the two subsequent upper groups of countries – that is for 25th and 50th quantile – as well. However, in the case of 75th and 90th quantile, institutional quality has been found to impact economic growth positively.The positive impact, however, has been found decreasing with increasing of income group of countries. On the other hand, the findings of the study implies that the impact of capital on economic growth will likely to be significant with gradual improvement in the quality of institutions and it has been the case for all the income group countries. In addition, the study finds, the impact of advancement of technology on economic growth gradually decrease with the improvement of institutional quality. Other than this lowest income group of countries, for all other income group countries, the impact of technological advancement tends to have a positive impact with the gradual improvement of the quality of institutions of an economy.

Growth induced export has become a major concern for policy makers to transform and upgrade the export composition to achieve economic growth objectives; in this respect, export diversification become at the heart of growth induced export narrative. Nevertheless, this study attempts to find relationship between export diversification and economic growth. To investigate this relationship, a cross-section method is used with averaged data from the period 1991 to 2009 of 41 sub Saharan Africa countries; moreover, diagnostic tests were conducted to ensure the robustness of the model. The empirical result of this study shows positive correlation between export diversification and economic growth which can be concluded that export diversification promotes economic growth.

The purpose of this study is to have an in-depth understanding of the importance of the institutional environment for financial development in 43 Sub-Saharan African countries during the years 2004-2018. Using new institutional economic theory (NIE) we study how the four institutional factors Control of Corruption, Rule of Law, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, and Voice and Accountability affect financial development. We also survey how the effect of institutional factors varies when there are either high, medium or low levels of corruption. Empirical results show a positive linear relationship between all institutional factors and financial development. However, when corruption levels are high the correlation between institutional factors and financial development varies and has a weak linear relationship. Inferential statistics results from a fixed effect regression model with robust standard errors shows; when we control for the financial environment, Political Stability and Absence of Violence is the only indicator for the institutional environment that has a positive significant effect on financial development. We thereby conclude that the institutional environment, mostly political institutions, are important for financial development.

Foreign Direct Investment’s (FDI) effect on economic growth has been studied for a long time. Many empirical studies and theories have seen FDI as an important source of capital inflow and a determining factor for economic growth. However, Hayat (2019) highlights that the quality of institutions is important for the inflow of FDI and economic growth in the host country. According to North (1990), institutions are the fundamental reason behind economic growth since they allow new ideas, firms and stakeholders to exist in the market. Hence, the aim of this research is, therefore, to analyze if FDI and the quality of institutions affect economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.

By using panel data for 39 Sub-Saharan African countries during the time period of 2002-2019, the results reveal that FDI has a significantly positive impact on economic growth. The five institutional variables used in this study (Government Effectiveness, Voice and Accountability, Control of Corruption, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Regulatory Quality) show no significance when it comes to the relation between quality of institutions and economic growth. Therefore, this study can not draw any conclusion regarding these results.

Under det senaste årtiondet har Kina genomgått en snabb tillväxt i sin exporthandel. I denna avhandling undersöks de viktigaste faktorer som påverkar Kinas export med hjälp av gravitationsmodellen. Studien observerar Kinas export till med hjälp av paneldata 30 mellan 1998 och 2007. De empiriska resultaten visar att de beroende variablerna, BNP per capita och populationen har starka och betydande effekter på Kinas exporthandel, medan distansen mellan länderna har en negativ effekt på handeln. Dessutom visar de empiriska resultaten att handelssamarbete har lett till betydande positiva effekter på exporten. Två andra förklarande variabler, regional ekonomisk organisation APEC (Asien Pacific Economic Cooperation) och växelkursen påverkar inte Kinas export betydligt.

The purpose of this research study is to examine the relationship between international trade and economic growth and the effect that international trade has on economic growth in sub-Saharan African countries (Sub-Saharan Africa). The majority of previous studies and research in this area claim that there is a positive correlation between these two variables, yet there are still some who question how much these two variables actually have influenced each other and if that effect is really significant enough to be considered significant as well as important. The information and data used in this study are taken from the World Bank Group, Human Development Reports and Fraser Institute. The study's theoretical framework uses growth theories, which consisted of the Solow model and endogenous growth theory, and trade theories, which consisted of the Ricardian model, the Heckscher-Ohlin model, and institutional theory to better explain the concept of economic growth and how international trade can affect the process of achieving economic growth. Within this research, a panel dataset study was carried out with the support of a regression analysis in order to measure the correlation between international trade and economic growth. The dependent variable for this research study was economic growth in the form of annual GDP per capita growth, while the independent variables included international trade, education, capital, population growth, labor force, corruption and economic freedom. Additionally, the study includes thirty-six out of a total of forty-eight possible countries in sub-Saharan Africa and is limited to a ten-year period between 2009-2019. The final result of this study's research shows that there is a significant positive correlation between economic growth and international trade and concludes that international trade actually has a very important effect/impact and is essential to achieving economic growth.

Global initiatives have caused renewed interest in the efficiency of aid and its impact on poverty. Whilst growth effects of foreign aid have extensively been analyzed, less attention has been paid to the distributional effect of aid. This paper aims to investigate the potential moderating effects of foreign aid on within-country income inequality using econometric analysis. Employing unbalanced panel data on 42 countries in the period 1990–2017, and conducting a multivariate regression analysis, this study finds no robust empirical support for the positive effects of foreign aid on income inequality.

Equality is part of the European policy and legislation. However there are still evident signs of women being treated unequally in the labour market. The aim of the thesis is to answer the question if women are more vulnerable to economic shocks in terms of wage distribution. The focus will be on women in Spain in the context of the financial crisis of 2008. The thesis examines the evolution of the salary structure in the period 2002-2014 using the microdata of the Structural Earning Survey. The taste-based and the statistical discrimination theory are going to be described in order to explain the causes of gender wage discrimination. The methods applied in this paper are the Mincer method, which explains the human capital theory and the Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions, which separates the gender wage gap into explained and unexplained parts. The results from the study suggest that there is a decrease in the gender wage gap in Spain following the situation before and after the crisis.

Equality is part of the European policy and legislation. However there are still evident signs of women being treated unequally in the labour market. The aim of the thesis is to answer the question if women are more vulnerable to economic shocks in terms of wage distribution. The focus will be on women in Spain in the context of the financial crisis of 2008. The thesis examines the evolution of the salary structure in the period 2002-2014 using the microdata of the Structural Earning Survey. The taste-based and the statistical discrimination theory are going to be described in order to explain the causes of gender wage discrimination. The methods applied in this paper are the Mincer method, which explains the human capital theory and the Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions, which separates the gender wage gap into explained and unexplained parts. The results from the study suggest that there is a decrease in the gender wage gap in Spain following the situation before and after the crisis.

Sweden is one of the countries that has had a very strong increase in the housing prices during the recent years according to SCB’s calculations. The development has not only been seen in Stockholm but it has also affected the smaller cities as well. The factors behind the massive price increases may be many, but the purpose of the essay has been to estimate the relationship between the factors: population density, income, new constructed condominiums in relation to the population, interest rate and unemployment have on condominiums rates. The main focus will lay on the following big cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö from the years of 2008-2016.

The housing prices will be analyzed from an economic perspective. Further, the study has been formed by the statistical material that has been accessible and then been tested using panel data that includes fixed effect. The study encompasses 45 municipalities with a time period of 9 years (2008-2016) which comprises to 405 observations, where the data is strongly balanced, meaning that the database is complete.

The result of the essay shows a positive correlation between population density and housing prices, an increase of one inhabitant per increases housing prices by 15.8 kr per square meter, if all the other variables are hold constant (model 7). The regression results indicate that population density is the factor that has the main impact on housing prices in comparison to all other factors. The results also shows a positive correlation between income and housing prices, as well as a negative correlation between the factors unemployment and the interest rate on housing prices in all models. On the other hand, new production shows an unexpected result.

Furthermore, the essay considered to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between the selected factors and its impact on the housing prices in Sweden's three largest cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö during the period 2008-2016.

The purpose of the thesis examines the relationship between migration and economic growth that has taken place in the EU Member States during the period 2009-2019. The study includes three different theories, Borja's model, Solow's model and Romers' model. It's based on these models in order to be able to answer the study's question and achieve the purpose of this study. A multiple regression analysis is used with the help of panel data for those EU member states. The data material which is used in this study is taken from Eurostat and The World Bank. The GDP per capita growth is used as the dependent variable and the independent variables are Migration, Employment, Expenses, Education and Trade. The results of the regression analysis show that migration has a significant positive relationship with the GDP per capita growth. This supports Borja's (1995) assumptions that there is a migration surplus for the receiving countries when migrants enter, moreover many other studies that are mentioned later that indicate the same. The discussion part deals with the connection between economic growth and migration in which the connections between previous studies and the results from this study is discussed.

The purpose of the thesis has been to investigate whether there is a link between trade liberalism and economic growth in the Asian countries. Previous research has pointed out that correlation exists between these variables, but there have also been other researchers who criticized such a relationship. We discovered that economic growth studies had previously been conducted where countries in Asia were included. This motivated us to carry out our study as our research hopefully helps to replenish existing knowledge gap. In the study, we have used cross-sectional regression analysis for 30 Asian countries where data were collected for 1990-2000. Our dependent variable in our regression is average GDP per capita, which also defines growth. We have used two independent variables as main variables, trade volume and economic freedom index. Our analysis shows that the majority of the variables in the study have a positive significant relation to economic growth.

Keywords: economic growth, trade liberalism, trade, GDP / capita, EFI, direct investment, import, export.

This study examined the relationship between energy poverty and environmental quality using panel data of 9 ECOWAS nations for the period of 2000 to 2020. The study adopted cross-sectional Augmented Im, Pesaran, and Shinpanel unit root test and the panel non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag techniques as analytical tools with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita as control variables. Results indicate the presence of significant symmetric and asymmetric relationship between energy poverty index and ecological footprint (EF) in the long run and further confirms the existence of the Environmental Kuznet Curve (EKC) Hypothesis only in the long run. The study also reveal that FDI has no significant influence on EF, while GDP leads to a significant increase in pollution via the ecological footprint. The study recommended some macro energy policies for the ECOWAS nations to improve their performance in tackling energy poverty and increasing environmental quality.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the level of human capital in a country will influence the effect FDI has on economic growth. The study covers 31 OECD-countries during the time period 1989-2020. The impact of FDI on economic growth is examined in a multiple regression model with panel data where the focus is on the interaction between FDI and education (a proxy for human capital). The theoretical framework is mainly focused on Romer’s endogenous growth theory and institutional theory. The result of the multiple regression model shows that FDI as a single variable has a positive effect on economic growth. The interaction between FDI and human capital was shown to have a negative effect on economic growth. However, the result of human capital as a single factor was proved to be positive in relation to economic growth. The results indicate that a high level of human capital in a country does not attract enough foreign direct investment to have a positive effect on economic growth.

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate the relationship between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions per capita in Sweden in the period of 1970-2018. As indicators, the economic indicator will be represented by the per capita gross domestic product, GDP, as the environmental indicator this study will use carbon dioxide emissions per capita, CO2, and the energy use per capita will represent the energy consumption variable. 

The research hypothesis is based on the idea of the classical EKC, the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Multivariate Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) approach which makes possible to evaluate non-stationary and cointegrating variables, while overcoming the omitted variable bias was used for the methodology part. Econometrics tests such as Augmented Dickey-Fuller Test and Johansen co-integration test are included, and the Granger causality test will provide four hypothesizes for the potential causalities between the included variable in this study. 

Previous studies raise debates on which factors significantly affect the economic growth in different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, the purpose of our study is to examine and analyze how the selected macroeconomic factors can have different effects on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. To concretize this, a panel data and regression analysis have been applied to 36 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa during the period of 2006-2019.

The thesis is composed of data over corruption index, foreign direct investment (FDI), GDP per capita growth, population growth, education, economic freedom, and socioeconomic indicators such as political rights.

To investigate these factors various macroeconomics theories have been applied, such as the Solow, Romer and Kremerian model, which explains the impact of population growth andeducation on economic growth. Moreover, the Electric Paradigm (OLI), the Institutional theory and some previous studies have been used to explain the effect of corruption, FDI, economic freedom, and political rights on economic growth.

A linear regression model was made in the econometric panel data analysis to investigate the selected factors. The result of this study shows that population growth and economic freedom have a significant impact on economic growth. Other factors, however, were statistically nonsignificant. 

The prices of detached houses in Sweden have in recent decades shown a price development that has been record high. The purpose of this study is to estimate whether there is a significant relationship between different economic variables for detached house prices in Sweden's municipalities. The thesis was carried out through an economic multiple regression analysis with panel data where “fixed effect” was included. The study covers 289 municipalities in Sweden during the period 2001–2019 and the total number of observations is 5491. The study is carried out in the form of two analyzes where the variables supply ratio, income, unemployment, interest, population, tax and debt are included.

In the first analysis in 2001–2019, debt is excluded because there is no basis and lack of data. In the second analysis in 2010–2019, the purpose is mainly to estimate the relationship between price as the dependent variable and debt as the independent variable. The study is based on the first analysis to answer the research question: Factors that affect the price development for detached houses in Sweden.The result of the thesis shows that income is the variable with the most estimated correlation and impact on housing prices relative to the other independent variables.

The result also shows an expected positive relationship between the variable population and the detached house prices, as well as an expected negative relationship between the variables supply ratio, unemployment, mortgage interest, tax and debt on detached house prices. The study contributes to an increased understanding of how different economic factors affect the relationships for detached houseprices in Sweden's municipalities during the period 2001–2019. The study includes observations over a long period of time with a data base where there is no loss of observations. The validity of this study is based on the study's implementation and theoretical basis with authentic references.

The aim of this study is to add to the understanding of how sensitive a country's inflation level is to global factors in relation to the size of its economy and to question the theory of the traditional Phillips Curve. The case study takes on a qualitative method by gathering and analyzing earlier research and applies a econometrics model study approach to analyze how certain variables might affect inflation. Panel data is used from 10 different OECD countries for the time period 1972–2020. The results for the Phillips Curve implies that there generally is a negative causality as the model predicts but that the causality is not always applicable. Results from the multivariate regression analysis that was performed on the panel data implies that productivity, GDP growth and import has a significant impact on inflation out of the four chosen variables. These results are coherent with a large part of the earlier research. The conclusion we make is that more research is required but defining the exact explanation behind what controls inflation might be hard to reach.

Difficulties with the integration of foreign born and especially refugees in the Swedish labor market have further strengthened unemployment in the country. Unemployment is a macroeconomic problem with the fact that it leads to loss of tax revenues and lower productivity which negatively affects a country's growth. Unemployment varies within counties and among population groups of municipalities in Sweden. This is problematic as it creates economic inequality between population groups and municipalities. It also creates social contexts meaning that some areas become resource-strong while others are resource-weak. This has a negative effect on economic welfare in the country. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the persistently high unemployment rate among foreign-born in Sweden`s municipalities can be explained by differences in municipal characteristics regarding human capital, cultural distances, and wage levels. Methods used for the study is the fixed effects regression models using a panel data of 290 individuals (all municipalities in Sweden) during the period 2009-2018. Statistical analyzes using figures and tables have been used as well. 

The study is based on human capital theory, social capital theory and theory of segregation. The results have shown that human capital related factors and characteristics linked to cultural distances have a significant impact on unemployment among foreign-born, in addition have foreign-born a lower value of human and social capital, which results in lower returns. The conclusion of this paper is that the human capital related factors can explain the higher unemployment rate among foreign-born people to a great extent. The cultural distance affects the value of foreign-born human and social capital and thus return. Therefore, there is a need for more effective integration policies to facilitate the establishment of foreign-born people in the Swedish labor market. Allocating them to the right areas where opportunities to acquire the necessary skills are great is one option. Even by shortening the waiting time for decisions on residence permits, work permits and waiting time for Swedish citizenship is important because this could give the opportunity to the foreign-born people to enter the country s labor market quickly as possible. Time is an important factor for them because it takes time to improve the value of their human capital, social capital, and necessary skills as well.

The ambitious UN-adopted sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been criticized for being inconsistent, difficult to quantify, implement and monitor. Disparaging analysis suggests that there exists a potential inconsistency in the SDGs, particularly between the socio-economic development and the environmental sustainability goals. Critiques also raise questions on the measurability and monitoring of the broadly framed SDGs. The goals are non-binding, with each country being expected to create their own national or regional plans. Moreover, the source(s) and the extent of the financial resources and investments for the SDGs are ambiguous. This chapter quantifies and examines the inconsistencies of the SDGs. It further inspects which of the underlying social, economic or environmental pillars are that most effective for achieving sustainable development. Analyses of the data reveal that the developed countries need to remain focused on their social and environmental policies. The developing countries, on the other hand, are better off being focused on their economics and social policies in the short run, even though environmental policies remain significant for sustainable development.

The increased immigration in Western Europe has been linked by some political parties to increased criminality rates. We study the statistical relationship between the proportion of foreign-born to three types of reported criminality - rapes, burglary, and assault. The analysis is based on Swedish municipality level data for 2002-2014, years with signicant immigration. Using non-parametric Gaussian processes models, we find that while reported rape rates have increased, they are likely best explained by changes in reporting. The reported burglary rates have decreased, while reported assault rates are positively correlated to the proportion of foreign-born residents in the municipality.

An explicit goal of foreign aid is to promote female empowerment and gender equality in developing countries. We investigate if foreign aid achieves this intended goal by examining its impact on gender performance of recipient countries at the country level. Employing structural equation models, our results suggest that aid alone, even when targeted to directly improve gender outcomes, is unlikely to shift systemic inequalities. Aid will need to bolster civil society efforts that challenge institutional structures and norms in order to impact gender outcomes at country level.

Women’s community-based savings clubs were observed as early as the late 19th century across the Global South. Microfinance promised to provide financial services to the poor (predominantly women in the Global South) that lack access to formal banking. This chapter provides a synthesis of the existing evidence on the impact credit services have had. It covers two specific issues: the impact of credit on poverty and its impact on women’s empowerment. The chapter uses an analytical framework drawn from a coalescence of basic methodological principles within feminist economics scholarship described by Power as the “social provisioning approach.” Specifically, it also uses well-being as a central measure of economic success and the notion that human agency is important. From the perspective of a “social provisioning” framework, impact on income alone would give us at best a partial picture on the social efficacy of credit.

The informal sector is core to the growth and livelihoods of many economies and is seen as both a highly dynamic sector and a fragile one. It provides significant amounts of employment across the world but the quality of this employment is often problematic, with employment in this sector characterised by ‘small or undefined work places, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, low levels of skills and productivity, low or irregular incomes, long working hours and lack of access to information, markets, finance, training and technology’. As with all areas of regulatory control, there are two types of environmental regulation policies: command and control policies and economic incentives. Many studies suggest that informal economic activity should be formalised. Since pollution is an externality from production, government attempts to reduce it often take the form of taxes on pollutants and subsidies on the disposal of waste. This chapter presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.

The informal economy - broadly defined as economic activity that is not subject to government regulation or taxation - sustains a large part of the world's workforce. It is a diverse, complex and growing area of activity. However, being largely unregulated, its impact on the environment has not been closely scrutinised or analysed. This edited volume demonstrates that the informal sector is a major source of environmental pollution and a major reason behind the environmental degradation accompanying the expansion of economic activity in developing countries. Environmental regulation and economic incentive policies are difficult to implement in this sector because economic units are unregistered, geographically dispersed and difficult to identify. Moreover, given their limited capital base, they cannot afford to pay pollution fees or install pollution- abating equipment. Informal manufacturing units often operate under unscientific and unhealthy conditions, further contributing to polluting the environment. The book emphasizes and examines these challenges, and their solutions, encountered in various sectors of the informal economy, including urban waste pickers, small- scale farmers, informal workers, home- based workers, street vendors and more. If the informal sector is to "Leave no one behind" (as the Sustainable Development Goals promise) and contribute to "inclusive growth" (an objective of the green economy), then its impact on the economy as well as the environment has to be carefully considered. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on both the informal economy and sustainable development, and will be of great interest to readers in economics, geography, politics, environment studies and public policy more broadly.

We investigate the effect of the informal sector and a range of governance indicators on both global and local pollutants for a panel of 58 countries during 1996–2011. The analysis employs a fixed effects-instrumental variable generalized method of moments approach. We find that the size of the informal sector has a significant impact on environmental quality, which is conditional on the level of economic development. For developing countries, the informal sector has a significant positive impact on local pollutants, whereas for the developed countries the informal sector has a significantly negative effect on global pollutants. The findings also reveal that the impact of governance depends on the type of governance measure, the level of economic development and the type of pollutant. Control of corruption emerges as the single most important factor, especially in the non-OECD countries, in improving environmental quality. We argue that the efficacy of an environmental policy for a country with a large informal sector will be low if the policy measures do not address governance, size of the informal sector and environmental policy targets.

Renewable energy (RE) has a strong synergy with some of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), thus its successful deployment can potentially result in an impact on these SDGs. In this study, we examine the synergy effect of renewable electricity on selected SDGs via the electricity prices for the European Union (EU) countries. Using panel data and a two-step estimation approach, our findings indicate a strong synergy effect between renewable electricity prices, SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth). The results further reveal that SDG 12 (responsible production and consumption) accounts for most of the future renewable electricity price variation (excluding self-effect), whereas future variation in SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy) and SDG 13 (climate action) are explained mostly by SDG 8 and SDG 12, respectively.

The renewable energy transformation will impact the entire economy. We investigate the impact and interlinkages in employment and non-renewable energy with the renewable energy transition in Europe. We further assess the potential contributions of renewable energy and non-renewable energy to the variability (changes) of future employment, output, and carbon emissions within the European Union (EU). Analyzing recent data from 28 EU countries and Norway, we employ a panel vector autoregressive regression model to estimate the potential interlinkages. Our results suggest that the transition to renewable energy sources has a positive but small and significant net impact on average employment in EU. We further find that renewable energy consumption contributes substantially to the future changes in employment in the short and the medium term. The potential effect of employment on non-renewable fossil-fuel-based energy consumption is relatively lower. Moreover, future renewable energy consumption contributes significantly to variations in non-renewable energy, per capita carbon emissions and GDP per capita in the short and the medium-term. The contribution of non-renewable energy to the future variability in renewable energy consumption is low, reflecting the diminishing impact of fossil-fuel-based energy on renewable energy consumption.

We investigate the effect of the informal sector and a range of governance indicators on both global and local pollutants for a panel of 58 countries during 1996-2011. The analysis employs a fixed effects-instrumental variable generalized method of moments approach. We find that the size of the informal sector has a significant impact on environmental quality, which is conditional on the level of economic development. For developing countries, the informal sector has a significant positive impact on local pollutants, whereas for the developed countries the informal sector has a significantly negative effect on global pollutants. The findings also reveal that the impact of governance depends on the type of governance measure, the level of economic development and type of pollutant. Control of corruption emerges as the single most important factor especially in the non-OECD countries in improving environmental quality. We argue that the efficacy of an environmental policy for a country with a large informal sector will be low if the policy measures do not address governance, size of the informal sector and environmental policy targets.

Universal, ambitious, and arguably ambiguous, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are difficult to measure, monitor, prioritize and achieve. They are a multi-dimensional construct of economic, social and environmental indicators that work through complex interlinkages. We investigate these interlinkages at the SDG target level to identify the trade-offs and synergies between the SDGs. Second, we identify the community of interlinked SDG targets to determine if the SDGs can be benchmarked and prioritized for different regions. Employing network analysis approach the analysis is based on the IAEG-SDG data for the period 2000–2017. We find several positive and negative interlinkages (reinforcing and balancing feedbacks) between the SDG targets. The trade-offs, however, are much weaker than the synergies. Analyzing network structures for different regions, our results suggest that universal benchmarking of SDGs is counterproductive. We argue that it may be useful to identify a specific community of SDG targets, and use them as a guide to prioritize certain goals in different regions.

Economic growth and increasing population impose long-term risks to the environment and society. Approaches to address the impact of consumption and production on bio-diversity loss, resource availability, climate change, and mounting waste problems on land and in seas have yet not proven to be successful. This calls for innovative approaches to address the complex environmental, social, and economic interrelationships that have to be addressed in transforming to sustainable development.  

Sustainable Consumption and Production, Volume I: Challenges and Development aims to explore critical global challenges and addresses how consumers, producers, the private sector, international organizations, and governments can play an active role in innovating businesses to support a transitioning towards sustainable consumption and production. The book explores different approaches and innovations to address sustainable consumption and production. It details multiple social and economic contexts to the challenges and developments towards a sustainable consumption and production. The book is of interest to economists, students, businesses, and policymakers.

The ambitious United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been criticized for being universal, broadly-framed, inconsistent and difficult to quantify, implement and monitor. We contribute by quantifying and prioritising the SDGs and their impact on sustainable development. We employ structural equation models (SEM) to investigate, which of the underlying pillars of SDGs (economic, social and environment) are the most effective in achieving sustainable development. Our results reveal that the developed countries, benefit most by focusing on social and environmental factors whereas the developing countries, benefit most by retaining their focus on the economic and the social factors.

We examine how the impact on women empowerment varies with respect to the location and type of group linkage of the respondent. Using household survey data from five states in India, we correct for selection bias to estimate a structural equation model. Our results reveal that in the southern states of India empowerment of women takes place through economic factors. For the other states, we find a significant correlation between women empowerment and autonomy in women’s decision-making and network, communication and political participation respectively. We do not however find any differential causal impact of different delivery methods (linkage models).

Since the end of 2019, the COVID-19 virus has been spreading from it’s epicenter Wuhan in China to the rest of the world. As a result of the virus being airborne, COVID-19 has led to high numbers of deaths and is a danger for billions of people. Except from the results on the humanitarian front, the virus has also affected the global economy. All over the world, factories have stopped production, institutions have closed their doors for the public and people have lost their jobs to avoid crowding. One of the industries that have been hit hard is the flight industry because of flight restrictions which have led to 60% of commercial flights being canceled.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the economic development of airlines in comparison to the marketindexes. Partly based on a macroeconomic perspective with help of the AS-AD framework, but the stock price of airlines will also be compared to the market index in a regression analysis to answer the question; how have the COVID-19 pandemic affected the correlation between the airlines and the market?

Based on a quantitative analysis, the conclusion is that the COVID-19 pandemic might have had an effect on the economic development of all the airlines that are studied in this paper. However, this can’t be determined because the results are only partly statistically significant.

This study focuses on the relationship among economic freedom, foreign direct investment and real per capita growth. We first study the relationship between economic freedom and FDI. Then investigate the effects on the growth with foreign direct investment and four indicators from the Heritage Foundation index, government spending, monetary freedom, business freedom, and trade freedom. The panel data of 91developing countries in the period of 2000-2017 are used. The fixed effect least squared dummy variable model is employed. First, we find that overall score of economic freedom has the positive and the significant sign of the impact on FDI. In more details, only the government spending, monetary freedom, and trade freedom seems to be the most relevant. Second, we find that the FDI insignificantly affects the growth in the countries of consideration. However, economic freedom such as trade freedom and monetary freedom are important to the growth. The policy implication is that enhancing the economic freedoms rather than the foreign direct investment might be beneficial to economic growth in the developing countries.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the causal relations between energy use, CO₂ emissions and economic growth for Sweden. Vector Error Correction model with annual data from 1970 to 2016 has been used in order to determine potential causality between the variables. The empirical findings indicate that in the long-run, causality relationship between energy consumption, CO₂ emissions and economic growth cannot be rejected and it is bidirectional. This means that energy is a determining factor for economic growth in Sweden and that applying policies in order to reduce the CO₂ emissions has slowed down economic growth in Sweden. This finding is consistent with the Feedback Hypothesis. But in the short-run no causality was found between energy and economic growth. According to Granger causality test results, bidirectional causality between CO₂ emissions and energy consumption cannot be rejected in the short-run. Variables’ trends show that in the period under study, energy consumption and economic growth have moved in the same direction; meaning that higher energy consumption has led to higher economic growth. At the same time, lower CO₂ emissions have been accompanied by higher economic growth. There is also short-run causality running from capital to economic growth according to VECM results. It can be suggested to the policy makers that in order to maintain economic growth and reduce environmental degradation, energy consumption should be shifted gradually from nonrenewable sources to renewable ones so to avoid decrease in economic growth and ensure lower levels of CO₂ emissions in the long-run.

This paper investigates the difference between domestic and foreign mergers and acquisitions (M&As), by examining both the target selection and the effect M&As have on target firms’ productivity while distinguishing between the size of the target firms. This is done by using a panel data of Swedish firms within the manufacturing industry during the period 2012 to 2020. Domestic and foreign acquisitions are distinguished in the data and a fixed effect as well as a difference-in-difference method are used to analyze effects of M&A on target firms’ productivity. A multinomial probit model is used to examine the target selection. Results reveal a non-random selection of targets for both domestic and foreign M&As. The results also indicate a possible negative effect on small and medium sized firms’ productivity level after foreign acquisition. However, no effects are found on target firms’ productivity growth, neither in domestic nor foreign acquired firms.

Upphandling och kundval av välfärdstjänster och hur dessa bör utformas diskuteras utifrån ett teoretiskt och generellt ekonomiskt perspektiv, med fokus på entreprenader. Insikter ger den nationalekonomiska forskningen om hur upphandling och kundval kan förväntas fungera på marknader som dessa sammanfattas. Metoder för val av leverantör och kontraktsmodeller som är mer ändamålsenliga än andra beskrivs. Valet mellan upphandling och kundval diskuteras.

Purpose: This study aims to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of government auditing of local authorities’ compliance with the procurement rules.

Design/methodology/approach: A diff-in-diff approach is used where the measure of compliance is (changes in) the incidence of private litigation under the Public Procurement Act, in audited vs non-audited municipalities. Further, semi-structured interviews were conducted with chief procurement officials.

Findings: No statistically significant effect is found. While strong effects of audits can be ruled out, the statistical results and the interviews do not, however, contradict a modest but long-lasting effect.

Originality/value: Few studies have addressed the effect of public procurement auditing on compliance. This study develops an empirical framework and presents empirical results.

The European Union (EU) formally changed its merger policy in 2004, moving from a dominance standard to one based on a significant impediment of effective competition, which appears more closely aligned with the U.S. substantial lessening of competition standard. We use data from both before and after this reform to explore whether EU policy has converged toward the U.S. standard. We start by identifying changes in the EU regime and detect a softer EU policy for unilateral effects. We model the outcomes of EU and U.S. investigations with logit models and use their predictions in decompositions and other exercises to show policy convergence for unilateral effects cases.

In 2009 and 2010, the Swedish pharmaceuticals market was reformed. One of the stated policy goals was to achieve low costs for pharmaceutical products dispensed in Sweden. We use price and sales data for off-patent brand-name and generic pharmaceuticals to estimate a log-linear regression model, allowing us to assess how the policy changes affected the cost per defined daily dose. The estimated effect is an 18 % cost reduction per defined daily dose at the retail level and a 34 % reduction in the prices at the wholesale level (pharmacies’ purchase prices). The empirical results suggest that the cost reductions were caused by the introduction of a price cap, an obligation to dispense the lowest-cost generic substitute available in the whole Swedish market, and the introduction of well-defined exchange groups. The reforms thus reduced the cost per defined daily dose for consumers while being advantageous also for the pharmacies, who saw their retail margins increase. However, pharmaceutical firms supplying off-patent pharmaceuticals experienced a clear reduction in the price received for their products.

We study the effect of the degree of exclusivity for the lowest bidder on the average price of generic pharmaceuticals in the short and long terms. Our results indicate that a 1-percentage-point gain in market share of the lowest bidder reduces average costs by 0.2% in the short term and 0.8% in the long term, but also reduces the number of firms by 1%. We find that reducing the number of firms has a strong positive (and hence counteracting) effect on average prices, a 1% reduction raising prices by approximately 1%.

Non-contractible quality dimensions are at risk of degradation when the provision of public services is privatized. However, privatization may increase quality by fostering performance-improving innovation, particularly if combined with increased competition. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden between 1990 and 2009 and estimate how opening to private provision affected mortality rates – an important and not easily contractible quality dimension – using a difference-in-difference-in-difference approach. The results indicate that privatization and the associated increase in competition significantly improved non-contractible quality as measured by mortality rates. © 2016

We evaluate whether an econometric technique that is used in the spatial econometrics and network effects literatures can be adopted as a test for collusive bidding in public procurement auctions. The proposed method is applied to the Swedish asphalt cartel that was discovered in 2001. Our dataset covers the period 1995–2009, which makes it possible to test for conditional independence between complementary cartel bids before and after 2001. Our estimates show a significant positive correlation between complementary cartel bids during the cartel period, whereas a non-significant correlation is shown during the later period. The variance of the parameter estimate of interest also differs between the periods, which suggests a structural change in bidding behavior among cartel members between the two periods.