The mention of the COVID-19 waves is as prevalent as the pandemic itself. Identifying the beginning and end of the wave is critical to evaluating the impact of various COVID-19 variants and the different pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical (including economic, health and social, etc.) interventions. We demonstrate a scientifically robust method to identify COVID-19 waves and the breaking points at which they begin and end from January 2020 to June 2021. Employing the Break Least Square method, we determine the significance of COVID-19 waves for global-, regional-, and country-level data. The results show that the method works efficiently in detecting different breaking points. Identifying these breaking points is critical for evaluating the impact of the economic, health, social and other welfare interventions implemented during the pandemic crisis. Employing our method with high frequency data effectively determines the start and end points of the COVID-19 wave(s). Identifying waves at the country level is more relevant than at the global or regional levels. Our research results evidenced that the COVID-19 wave takes about 48 days on average to subside once it begins, irrespective of the circumstances.

This study investigates empirically if land characteristics (especially forests and mountains) are of importance for the local ability to withstand the shock of the Covid-19 on domestic tourism demand during the summer of 2020. A second step of the analysis focuses on the recovery stage in the subsequent summer. Three tourism indicators are considered: arrivals, overnight stays and length of stay. Official data on land use characteristics of 2029 villages in the Federal state of Bavaria (South Germany) are employed for the analysis. Estimations using the Spatial Durbin model combined with the Heckman selection model reveal that there is a significant relationship between the proportion of forest within as well as surrounding the village and the demand for domestic tourism compared with the 2019 baseline. There is also a significant relationship with the altitude of the surrounding areas. The importance of mountains and forests is present in both the initial year of the pandemic and in the recovery year of 2021, although the magnitude is lower in the summer of 2021. Direct and spatial effects can also be found for lakes and rivers on overnight stays and length of stay.

This study investigates empirically how natural snow depth and permanent snow affect the number of new second homes in Norway. One out of four Norwegian municipalities is partly covered by glaciers and permanent snow. In the winter seasons of 1983–2020, there is a decline in snow depth from 50 to 35 cm on average (based on 41 popular second-home areas in the mountains). Results of the fixed effects Poisson estimator with spatial elements show that there is a significant and positive relationship between natural snow depth in the municipality and the number of second homes started. There is also a significant and negative relationship between the number of new second homes in the municipality and a scarcity of snow in the surrounding municipalities. However, the magnitude of both effects is small. Estimates also show a strong positive relationship between the proportion of surface covered by permanent snow or glaciers in the municipality and new second homes. This implies that a decline in permanent snow and glaciers may make these areas less attractive for the location of second homes.

We investigate the market performance of negatively screened environment social and governance (ESG) portfolio or sustainable investments prior to and during crisis. A general and simple method is developed under the ESG Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) framework for the assessment. The novelty is that this method can be employed when the parent portfolio is not a market portfolio. In this situation, both coefficients, alpha and beta, in the reduced form of regression have special interpretations and are informative. This paper examines 24 negatively screened ESG indices from the S&P, DJSI and MSCI data across various regions, firm sizes, and criteria of screening, for 2017 to 2021. Markov Switching Autoregressive (MSAR) model is adopted to identify the crisis regime. Our results show that the negatively screened ESG indices provide positive investors’ surpluses for ESG-motivated investors during the crisis, when the corresponding parent indices are the market portfolios. For ESG investments where market portfolios are not their parent indices, half of ESG indices under consideration still provide positive surplus with similar systematic risks as their parent indices during the crisis. The remaining ESG indices under-performs but has relatively lower systematic risks, implying resilience as compared to the corresponding parent indices during the crisis. Furthermore, we demonstrate the sensitivity analysis of treating a parent index as a market portfolio.

This study investigates two aspects of how an external shock in the guise of the Covid-19 pandemic affects domestic tourism demand: (1) If the impact varies across regions and over time or (2) whether a permanent change (hysteresis) occurs anywhere. By doing so, a presumptive change in domestic tourism demand during three summers is quantified based on timely official data for all Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) and Estonia, encompassing a total of 76 NUTS3 regions. These regions are divided into five groups from large metropolitan to remote. Tourism demand is approximated by the number of domestic overnight stays in accommodation establishments in the summer months 2016–2022. Dynamic panel data estimations, including household consumption and hotel price index, reveal that all non-metropolitan regions experience a strong increase in domestic tourism flows in the first summer of the pandemic compared with the three years preceding 2020. In contrast, the largest metropolitan areas encounter a substantial decline. The surge in demand for non-metropolitan areas continues in 2021, while the large metropolitan regions return to their pre-pandemic level. After this, demand no longer deviates from its pre-2020 pattern across regions, confirming that the effects are temporary.

This study investigates empirically how natural snow depth affects the number of downhill skiers. Data include the number of skier visits for the 32 largest ski resorts in Sweden from the 1998/1999 to the 2018/2019 seasons. Results of spatial dynamic estimations show that an increase in natural snow depth in the ski area has a significant negative impact on the number of skier visits in the short term, although the magnitude is small. This implies that a snow deficit leads to increased demand for downhill skiing both directly and indirectly (in the neighbouring areas). The variable snow depth in the neighbouring ski areas is not significantly different from zero, indicating that no spatial substitution takes place. There is, however, a strong positive relationship between skier visits to neighbouring areas, revealing that ski resorts are complements rather than substitutes. The long-term influence of snow depth is not significant, implying that the ski business is independent of variations in snow depth. Instead, the number of skier visits is mainly determined by past visits, revealing a high degree of persistence.

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 investigates the short-run impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of domestic overnight stays at the regional level in the summer season 2020. Official data for 65 regions in four countries are used for the analysis (Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland). Dynamic panel data models are employed to estimate a tourism demand equation (real GDP and price fluctuations) augmented by average temperatures. Estimation results reveal that domestic overnight stays evolve unevenly in the first summer after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The short-run effects show that the number of domestic overnight stays in densely populated regions decreases by 27% in July as well as in August 2020, in comparison with the same months in previous years, ceteris paribus. To the contrary, there is a surge of 27 and 10%, respectively, for sparsely populated areas in the same months. JEL: Z3, R11 and R12.

This study investigates empirically changes in domestic summer tourism demand following the Covid-19 pandemic in 305 regions across six European countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden) based on official data. Five different groups of NUTS 3 regions are identified in accordance with a typology suggested by the OECD where density and connectivity are aspects of importance. Dynamic panel data estimations show that large metropolitan regions experience strong decreases in demand (approximately 30 per cent) both in July and August 2020. There are, however, clear differences between the Northern and Southern European countries. In the North, the remote regions encounter an increased demand that is partially offsetting losses in the large metropolitan regions. This pattern cannot be found in the South. The decline in domestic tourism flows to the major metropolitan areas is also more pronounced in the South of Europe, approximately 50 per cent per summer month compared with 20 per cent (July 2020) and stagnation (August 2020) in the North regions.

This study investigates empirically how the regional economic activity, measured as the agglomeration of establishments, affects domestic travel and tourism flows during the COVID-19 summer of 2020. Domestic tourism flows are approximated by the number of overnight stays in all 96 French regions. Results from spatial estimations reveal that lower economic activity attracts more domestic tourists. This relationship becomes inflated if the neighbouring areas are characterized by equally sparse economic activity. In July and August 2020, regions with a 10% lower density of establishments (combined effect of within the same region and surrounding regions) have a between one and two percentage points higher growth rate in domestic overnight stays than others. The share of second homes is also significantly and positively related to domestic tourism. Coastal regions and regions surrounded by national parks have a larger growth in domestic overnight stays in August 2020 (by 15 and 24 percentage points, respectively). The counterfactual estimations based on data for the years prior to the pandemic (2017-2019) reveal that regions with a high establishment density are growing in domestic tourism. The other local characteristics investigated are either insignificant (direct effects) or have the opposite sign (spillover effects).

This article investigates the performance of the stock market and its volatility in the travel and leisure industry for three Nordic countries using daily data from June 2018 to June 2020, a period that includes the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic. The methodology is based on the Markov regime switching model that allows unobservable regime shifts in the stock return relationship between the travel and leisure industry and the overall market in the period before the outbreak of Covid-19 crisis and during the recovery period at the end of the first wave. The results provide strong evidence of regime switching behaviour in the form of idiosyncratic risk as measured by volatility. The period before Covid-19 corresponds to a low/medium idiosyncratic risk, while the period of the pandemic is characterized by a regime with high idiosyncratic risk. Overall, the timing, likelihood and duration of this crisis regime depend on the composition of the travel and leisure firms. Those with a large proportion of online gambling firms perform better, while those consisting of international transportation firms, hotels and restaurants perform negatively. This study shows that the high-frequency data and the model chosen here can provide timely information on the impact of the pandemic on various tourism and leisure businesses that could be useful for policymaking.

In this study, the stock market performance of the travel and leisure industry during the Covid-19 pandemic is investigated by use of the three-regime Markov switching model. The analysis employs daily data for six sub-sectors (airlines, gambling, hotels, leisure services, restaurants and bars as well as travel and tourism) for the United States from January 2018 to November 2021. Estimation results provide strong evidence of regime switching behaviour with wide differences across subsectors during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. A longer duration of high volatility characterises the airline and leisure services indices. These sectors exhibit the most pronounced downturn that is not fully recovered in November 2021. In contrast, the period of high volatility in the restaurant, gaming and hotel industries is relatively short, and stock market performance recovers almost to the general trend. Of all sub-sectors, restaurants and bars experience the shortest duration of high volatility, limited to the second quarter of 2020. The stock market indices for the travel and tourism industry (mainly car rentals) are also highly volatility, but this is pattern that was observed already before the pandemic.

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.

Entrepreneurship will not always productive: Baumol (1990, 1993) distinguishes between productive, unproductive, and destructive entrepreneurial activities, and in the last two cases, new values are not created. Setting of from the notion of destructive entrepreneurship and the bankruptcy institute as framework for the empirical analysis, we use long aggregate series on bankruptcies and bankruptcy frauds in Sweden, 1830–2010. We operationalize destructive entrepreneurship with bankruptcy frauds. The bankruptcy institute is not a pure cleansing mechanism; assets can be redistributed by criminal procedure. Thus, a form of destructive entrepreneurship can be conducted within this system. We link bankruptcy frauds to the selection mechanism—the aggregate bankruptcy volume—over time. We cannot establish any direct linkages between the bankruptcy volume and institutional changes. However, and in line with research on bankruptcy diffusion and diffusion of economic crimes, we find that bankruptcy frauds have significant, positive impacts on the bankruptcy volume. Therefore, our results indicate that increases in bankruptcy frauds, destructive entrepreneurship, would affect the economic system. © 2018 The Author(s)

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.

This article provides new evidence on the stability of the long-run income elasticity of tourism and travel demand by use of the recently developed smooth time-varying cointegration regression model. The estimations control for relative purchasing power parity of the source country and make use of a specific country dataset where domestic and foreign overnight stays are available over a longer period of time (Switzerland, 1934–2015). Results show that the income elasticity of foreign overnight stays peaks at approximately two in the early 1960s, drops to around one in the early 1980s and from then on remains stable until the end of the sample. Domestic income elasticity reaches its highest levels in the 1930s, then steadily falls towards one in the mid-1960s, and therefrom remains stable until 2015. Different phases in the tourism area life cycle might be a major explanatory factor for variation in income elasticities over time. © The Author(s) 2018.

This paper provides new evidence on the impact of temperatures on tourism demand in the winter season. The analysis is based on time series data spanning from 1960 to 2015 for the South Tyrolean mountains in Italy. Since 1960, winter temperatures have increased by 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade, on average. A nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is employed for the estimations. This model allows two separate coefficients to impact tourism demand, following temperature changes (decreases or increases). Results reveal that an increase in winter temperatures by one degree Celsius leads to a decline in the number of accommodation guests (arrivals) by eight per cent, while temperature decreases have no effect on the number of arrivals. However, sensitivity to temperature increases has been declining since the early 1990s, probably due to the widespread usage of snowmaking facilities. The number of these facilities has increased by almost 10 per cent per year on average over the same period. In recent years (1986-2015), and as a consequence of these measures, temperature increases no longer have an effect on winter tourism demand. Conversely, decreases in temperatures lead to small increases in arrivals (by four per cent increase due to a one degree Celsius decrease).

This study tests for a structural shift in the relationship between revenues of ski lift operators and natural snow conditions. The analysis is based on time series data for the Swedish ski lift industry spanning from 1980 to 2017. Since 1970, snow depth in winter sport destinations has decreased markedly by about 5 cm per decade. Estimations based on the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model show that revenues (in constant prices) of ski lift operators are significantly positively related to natural snow conditions, given the impact of relative prices and real GDP. However, ARDL estimations with rolling windows reveal that the sensitivity of revenues from ski lift ticket sales to variations in snow depth is declining over time. For the subsamples starting at the end of 1980s onward, revenues no longer significantly depend on natural snow depth. This is likely due to the implementation of adaptation measures such as investments in snowmaking facilities. © 2018, The Author(s) 2018.

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.

Ekonomer betraktar vanligtvis konkursutvecklingen som en konjunkturindikator och därmed beroende av förändringar på ekonomins efterfrågesida: konkurserna förväntas öka i tider av ekonomisk nedgång och minska under högkonjunkturer. Flertalet analyser är emellertid kortsiktiga. I denna uppsats presenterar vi ny och unik empiri där vi ana­lyserar det långsiktiga sambandet mellan konjunkturväxlingar och konkurser i Sverige mellan år 1830 och år 2010. I uppsatsen diskuteras också problem som kan uppstå i tolk­ningen av konkursstatistiken, både historiskt och i vår samtid. Den statistiska analysen visar att det delvis går att fastställa ett samband mellan makroekonomiska svängningar och förändringar i konkursmängden.

Recent developments in entrepreneurship suggest a causal link between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth: entrepreneurship precedes economic growth. A positive effect from entrepreneurship on economic development in advanced, innovation-driven economies in the most recent decades is often maintained. Self-employment is one of the most common indicators of entrepreneurship. The present study uses very long series of non-interrupted data on self-employment in Sweden (1850–2000). It analyzes the relationship between variations in self-employment and economic growth. For the entire period, variations in self-employment had a significant, instantaneous positive correlation with GDP growth. However, no causal relationship could be discovered: variations in self-employment did not (Granger) cause GDP growth. We discovered a structural break in GDP growth as early as in the year of 1948. Up until 1948, (Granger) causality between self-employment and GDP could not be established for any direction. For the other segment (1949–2000), GDP growth (Granger) caused self-employment growth, but not the other way around. For the period 1949–2000, but not for the previous period, selfemployment lagged with respect to GDP growth.  Consequently, GDP growth preceded self-employment growth, but self-employment growth did not precede GDP growth. Given that self-employment is a suitable indicator, the empirical results in this study are, in several respects, in disagreement with dominating assumptions in mainstream research.

Entrepreneurship has gained increasing support from governments in recent decades. Entrepreneurship is considered to generate new jobs, innovations, and economic growth. In current research, a causal link between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth is maintained, where variations in entrepreneurship precede variations in economic output. Various models identify a positive effect entrepreneurship on economic development in advanced, innovation-driven economies in the most recent decades – a time when several Western countries transformed from ‘managed’ to ‘entrepreneurial’ economies.

Self-employment is one of the most common indicators of entrepreneurship in both policy and research. The present study analyzes the relationship between growth in self-employment and economic growth in Sweden between 1850 and 2000. For the entire period (1851–2000), variations in self-employment had a significant, instantaneous positive correlation with GDP growth. Using Granger causality tests, the results in this study show that variations in self-employment did not granger-cause GDP growth. We discovered a structural break in GDP growth as early as in the year of 1948, which gives two different periods: 1851–1948 and 1949–2000.

Between 1851 and 1948, Granger causality between self-employment and GDP in either (Granger) direction could not be established. For the other segment (1949–2000), GDP growth granger-caused self-employment growth, but not the other way around. Granger causality tests in the frequency domain show that for the period 1949–2000, but for no other periods, variations in self-employment lagged with GDP growth. Consequently, GDP growth preceded self-employment growth, but self-employment growth did not precede GDP growth.

Given that self-employment is a suitable indicator for entrepreneurship, the empirical results in this study are, in several respects, in disagreement with dominating assumptions in mainstream entrepreneurship research.