The aim of this study is to investigate the Swedish currency (SEK) exchange rate daily volatility effects on the OMX stock price volatility in two separate periods of currency depreciation and appreciation. We used the exchange rate of the four main currencies against the SEK, the USD, EUR, CYN and JPY, as a base to calculate the average daily movement and the volatility of the SEK for the period between February 2018 to December 2020. We used a modified GARCH model specially designed to address the questions of this paper following the same steps used by Fang (2002) to design his model. This paper provides evidence that the daily exchange rate volatility has a significant, but neglectable, effect on the daily stock market volatility. The results can be explained by the high level of economic stability in Sweden and the low level of uncertainty between the investor.

The purpose for thesis is to test the cointegration among cryptocurrencies, financial assets and COVID-19 Cases/Deaths to find if there is cointegration. The Johansen cointegration test is used in order to find if there is cointegration. For the whole period spans from April 2016 to April 2021, the results showed that there is existing cointegration between Bitcoin and each market index. For the pre-pandemic period spans from April 2016 to December 2019, the results showed that there is no cointegration between Bitcoin and each market index. For the pandemic period spans from January 2020 to April 2021, the results showed that there is no cointegration between Bitcoin and each market index. On the other side, there is no cointegration between Ethereum and each market index in the three time periods. The results for the pandemic period showed that there is cointegration between COVID-19 cases and each market index except IBEX35 in Spain. Moreover, there is existing cointegration between COVID-19 cases and each cryptocurrency. The results showed that there is cointegration between (COVID-19 deaths and each market index) and (COVID-19 deaths and each cryptocurrency). Finally, the cryptocurrencies and market indices provide advantages in terms of hedge against the pandemic.

In this thesis, the effects of Covid-19 on biotechnological companies are being studied. Five companies are analyzed: AstraZeneca PLC (AstraZeneca), Pfizer, Novavax, Modena, and Janssen, an affiliate of Johnson & Johnson. Where we analyze Abnormal returns these five companies for the period between December 20, 2018, to January 28, 2020. We use the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to calculate the alpha and beta measurements for the five companies. The results shows that abnormal returns were observed before and after the event date and continue to record mild increases in the long run. In addition, it was observed that there existed positive significant abnormal returns in the short run in Pfizer, Novax, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca. Moderna recorded positive abnormal returns, but they were not significant. We conclude that the market disruption made it difficult to anticipate financial markets during the coronavirus pandemic. Scientist and governments paid attention to the spread and supported the development these select companies were making, with the hope of producing vaccines and medicines to help curb the pandemic.

The aim of this thesis is to study what Dementia is costing the society in Sweden year 2020 and how the relationship between specialized care costs and outside sources relates to each other. In this study we use the economic model from Jo (2014) and the Two-Part model by Sauzet et al (2019). A binary logistic regression attempts to examine a potential relationship between specialized care costs and outside sources. We use the human capital approach to shed light on total care costs for Dementia and establish a Cost of Illness study. The results show an estimation that Dementia costed Sweden 68,5 billion SEK in 2020 and the regression establishes that there is a relationship between specialized costs and outside sources, for example age affecting the cost of being a dementia patient more than where you live.

The purpose of this study is to analyze different condominium characteristics and to find out how much they affect the prices of condominiums located in the central areas of Gothenburg. A hedonic pricing model and several regression analyzes have been used to find the results. Information from 332 sold condominiums from 18-02-2015 to 18-05-2015 has been used in the calculations, grouped into different variables. The various independent variables as living space, fees and location explains the dependent variable that is the final price of condominiums. A shorter time interval has been used to minimize price impact from macroeconomic factors such as inflation, interest rates and economic forecasts. Four different parish areas have been explored: Johanneberg, Vasa, Annedal and Domkyrkan. The information about the condominiums sold was retrieved from värderingsdata.se. The results showed that the size, fees, balcony, floor and age influence the prices. The size indicated the absolute greatest impact on prices.

In the context of the global land rush, some portray large-scale land acquisitions as a potent threat to the livelihoods of already marginalized rural farming households in Africa. In order to avoid the potential pitfall of studying a particular project that may well have atypical effects, this paper systematically investigates the impact on commercial farm wage incomes for rural smallholder households of all pledged investments in the agricultural sector in Zambia between 1994 and 2007. The results suggest that agricultural investments are associated with a robust moderate positive effect, but only for households with a relative shortage of land.

The thesis evaluates both the business and financial performance of Arctic Paper Munkedals AB. The company was founded in 1817 and is located in Munkedal, Sweden. The evaluation was achieved through ratio analysis of the annual reports of Arctic Paper Munkedals AB over a five-year period and business performance analysis using the balanced scorecard model. The data collections are from the annual financial reports for five years before the 2008 recession. Different financial ratios were evaluated such as short-term liquidity ratios, leverage ratios, profitability ratios, asset utilization and capital market ratios. The mathematical calculations were established for ratio analysis from 2003-2007 along with graphical analysis and comparisons. According to Altman (The Journal of Finance, 1968), observed evidence for five years prior to failure was cited as conclusive that ratio analysis can be useful in the prediction of failure. The research paper also analyzes the business performance of Arctic Paper Munkedals AB using the balanced scorecard model. This model is a customer-based planning and process improvement system, with its primary focus on driving an organization's change process by identifying and evaluating pertinent performance measures. It complements the traditional financial perspective with other non­financial perspectives such as customer satisfaction, internal business process as well as learning and growth. The balanced set of performance measures tells a concise yet complete story about the achievement and performance of the organization toward its mission and goals. It provides a holistic view of what is happening in the organization.

The purpose of this work is to investigate which factors are the most crucial in the Swedish household indebtedness. We use Meng et al. (2011) model to access the impact of unemployment, the number of new construction of housing, population, gross domestic product, real estate price index, consumer price index and the interest rate on the Swedish household indebtedness for the period 1995-2015. In addition, we use cointegration and ECM "Error Correction Model" to determine the long run and the short run impact of these factors on the Swedish household indebtedness. The results in the study reveal the GDP and housing prices as the most crucial factors that household debt has increased in the long term, while the most decisive short-term factors are unemployment and housing prices.

This essay investigates the determinants of the Swedish debt ratio for the period 1996-2016. The model that this project is built around is made by Meng et al (2011) where the dependent variable is debt ratio for swedish households and the explanatory variables are GDP, real interest rate, HPI (House Price Index), number of new constructed houses, unemployment ratio and change in inflation. This essay uses cointegration test and Error Correction Model to investigate the short run and long run determinants of the Swedish household debt ratio. The final result after an Error correction model shows that HPI, GDP and unemployment are the variables that affects the debt ratio for Swedish households the most.

The corona virus 2019 (COVID 19) pandemic has impacted businesses differently with many industries recording negative trends. Travel restrictions are seen as a solution to contain the spread of the virus, and these have impacted operations in the airline industry. This research uses an Events Study approach to investigate if the efficient market hypothesis holds for the airline industrystocks, following the announcements of three COVID 19 related events: declaration of COVID 19 a global pandemic; announcement of financial relief packages; and announcement of vaccination rollout. Using a sample of 46 airline stocks in 10 countries, empirical results suggest that the efficient market hypothesis does not hold when there is excessive information flowing in the market and that events with confounding effect lead to semi-efficient market hypothesis. 

The consumption of Swedish households represents two-thirds of Sweden's total GDPgrowth and can therefore be seen as the engine in the Swedish economy. Changes in consumption can therefore be of great importance to the country's economy and are important to analyze. The purpose of this study is to analyze how macroeconomic variables affect the consumption of Swedish households. The macroeconomic variables that will be investigated are: disposable income, inflation, interest rate, and wealth, consisting of financial and real assets. In order to facilitate understanding of the consumption behavior households, the most well-known consumption theories will form the basis of the study, which are: Keynes Consumption Theory, Life Cycle Hypothesis and the Permanent Income Hypothesis. A quantitative study is performed which means that the relationship between selected variables will be examined by the time period from 1986 to 2017 by an econometric model. Based on previous research and collected data sets, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ADL). The results of the study indicate that there is a relationship between changes in consumption and changes in the explanatory variables disposable income, inflation and housing wealth. The impact of the the variables on consumption over time is very difficult to identify because of lack of significance in the time lags.

The title of this essay is "What are the effects of a cashless society on VAT evasion –A study on Denmark, Finland & Sweden". Due to an increasingly digitalized world there will be different effects on the economy. We are getting closer to a cashless society every day, but we do not know the consequences that this will have. VAT evasion has long been a problem and has been easy to go through with, due to all the payments made with cash. It would be interesting to see if there is going to be a change in VAT evasion now as we go towards a cashless society. The aim of the study was therefore to answer the question: what are the effects of a cashless society on VAT evasion. To answer this question we focused on collecting data from three Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Many articles were read on the subject before interesting data was collected to be analyzed. The data, mostly gathered from the European Central Bank, included the VATgap, number of payment terminals, number of ATMs, percentage of total payments made with cards, GDP and the Consumer Price Index for each of the three chosen countries. In the theoretical framework the theory around VAT is presented as well as a short discussion about the underlying factors on VAT evasion. There is also a section on how we have chosen to represent the cashless society and how this will be measured in the paper. In order with previous research the hypothesis of the study was formed to be that the VAT gap will decrease as we gotowards a cashless society. Multiple regressions were made on the data collected and the result analyzed. There was no significant relationship found between the VAT gap and any of the three explanatory variables. Instead the VAT gap seemed to be connected to what country that was studied. The coefficients of the variables seemed to indicate that there might be a positive relationship between the VAT gap divided by GDP and the number of payment terminals. The reason for this relationship was discussed to possibly be blamed on the fact that card usage increases the total transactions due to the speed and simplicity of card payments. In order to make the results more reliable it was suggested that the study would be enlarged to include more countries and specifically countries that are less digitalized and perceived to be more corrupt.

Sweden has a history of labor migration since the World War II. The migration structure has however changed over the last decades and contains a greater number of refugees. The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of labor migration on the economic growth in Sweden. Also throughout the study we will investigate whether Sweden needs labor migration to meet the needs of the labor market. With this study we want to create a discussion that could provide a greater understanding to the impact of labor migration. The time period in this study extends from 1970 to 2014. A Panel Vector autoregressive model (VAR) will be used to analyze the relationship between labor migration and economic growth. By support of previous research, a theoretical discussion and a comparison of results regarding labor migrations effect on the economic growth will be carried out. In the study we can deduce a positive impact on the Swedish economic growth of the immigration. The variable immigration does however not only take the labor migration into account, which can lead to a deceptive result, because the impact of all immigration is captured in this variable. In the analysis of the result we can interpret that immigration does not displace domestic labor, because of the positive impact of immigration on the employment rate.

In this thesis, the aim is to investigate the relationship between house prices and household indebtedness in Sweden, considering both the short and long-term perspectives between 2000 and 2019. This means three major interferences on the debt- and housing market are present, more precisely two amortization requirements and the so-called mortgage ceiling and the effects they've brought.

In this thesis, the main model used is the vector autoregressive model, which gives a good insight into what the relationship between the variables looks like in both directions. To be able to use that model, and run such regressions, several tests were made to ensure the variables meet the standards required for a VAR.

Since rising house prices would most probably cause people to lend more money to be able to buy the houses, our hypothesis was that house prices should have a positive effect on household indebtedness. This was something we found the foundation for in the literature, and it was also true when we ran the regressions. House prices had a significant and positive effect on household debt, while the opposite relationship showed a far weaker connection between these variables.

Important to keep in mind when reading this thesis is that more variables could of course be included, and several other models used to investigate the relationship between house prices and household debt.

Purpose: The purpose is to investigate whether investors can obtain excessreturns by following CEO's who purchase shares in their own company.

Theoretical perspectives: The study includes theories; the effective market hypothesis, information asymmetry and the signaling hypothesis.

Methodology: The study is based on a quantitative method that, through a deductive approach, will test market efficiency when a CEO purchase shares in their own company. The gathered data will pass through models and tests to see whether there exists excess return opportunities

Conclusions: In order to give a result to the main question of the thesis, the study needs to go through two hypothesis. Firstly, hypothesis one; is the share price effected when a CEO purchase shares in his own company. The study establish there is a significant difference to the test value "zero". We reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative, which means when a CEO buys shares, the share price is effected positively.

When the study establishes there is a positive effect on share price when CEO’s buys shares, we move on to the second hypothesis; can a private investor follow CEO’s purchases and also gain returns? The study determines here is no significant difference in returns opportunities, ie. if one intends to follow a CEO's buying. Therefore we accept the null hypothesis. It was found by studying whether there exists a significant difference between the share price of the first trading day and onwards. The study demonstrates higher return opportunities in the short term in smaller companies compared to big companies. The study also examines the index movement during the same period, and the study establishes there are more return opportunities when following a CEO’s purchases rather than buying index during the same period.

In this essay, we analyze the impact of monetary policy on both the Swedish and Swiss real estate market for the period 1987 to the first quarter of 2021. We use Katrakilidis and  Trachanas (2012) work, where we got inspiration from to use the Autoregressive distributed lag model (ADL) to examine the link between monetary policy and Swedish as well as Swiss housing prices. Our final results denote that there is a presence of explanatory power from the interest rate, the tool of monetary policy to the housing price index in both countries. In both Sweden's and Switzerland's case, we can see that there is a positive outcome in the HPI in0,014 respectively 0,773 per 1 % increase in the real interest rate, meaning that there exists an impact of monetary policy in both of these countries in the short run.

Hedge funds are an investment alternative that has become more available to retail investors, it is a segment in the financial sector that now manage over 2000 billion USD. A key factor to it is increased popularity is due to the substantial decrease in minimum investment, making it a more considerable alternative for the average investor. With the latest year’s volatile markets, one could understand that the fundamental structure of a hedge fund seems lucrative, being able to hedge their portfolios in declining markets. These advantages do not come without a price and hedge fund are known to take the highest management fees in the business, allowing for successful hedge fund managers to obtain some of the highest salaries on this plant. Are these salaries justified due to abnormal returns?

To answer this questions as comprehensive as possible, we first conducted a test for the random walk hypothesis, exploring if it is possible to predict market movements. Finding this possible, we proceeded to test for how well European and North American hedge fund managers have performed overall.

Testing for excessive return over relevant benchmark indices by performing tests for the capital asset pricing model, Jensen’s alfa and the Fama and French three factor model to validate the results even further. With all tests concluding that hedge fund managers succeed to outperforming their benchmark indices. We later conducted tests for both the Sharpe and Treynor ratio to interpret how much of a risk-adjusted abnormal return the hedge fund managers achieved.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the immigration to Sweden affects the Swedish real estate prices, and if so, how and to what extent. The study relates to property prices of houses in Sweden during the years 1993 – 2012. A subsidiary purpose is to investigate which group of immigrants that has the most effect on real estate prices, the returning Swedish-born or the foreign-born. The study is based on several multiple regressions including variables retrieved from the DiPasquale and Wheaton-model. The variable to be explained in the analyses is the property price and the explaining variables are interest rate, disposable income, debt, unemployment, new construction, rent, gross domestic product and immigration.

Similarly to previous research from Switzerland, Spain, Canada, USA and New Zealand, the study concludes that there is a positive relationship between immigration and property prices. The Swedish results, however, demonstrates a stronger connection than the other countries in the short run. Regarding the subsidiary purpose regarding the influence of different groups of immigrants, the study shows that it, in the short run, is the returning Swedes that to a greater extent affect property prices

The following report investigates how the final prices of vacation homes in Orust municipality changed during the covid-19 pandemic. To carry out the survey, we will use data on final prices for holiday homes in the municipality partly before and partly during the pandemic. Since the individual characteristics of the vacation homes can differ a lot, the factors that affect the prices need to be divided into different variables. Based on the result, it is possible to draw a conclusion as to whether each variable affected the prices. The report will also examine the possible other reasons that have contributed to the price changes. During the pandemic, the government in Sweden introduced restrictions which changed people's behavior patterns and contributed to people having more money to spare. Together with these factors, as well as the introduction of an exception to the amortization requirement, the demand changes and the need to have access to a vacation home in Sweden increases. Many workplaces also introduced that employees, as far as possible, control their work from home, which also led to more people wanting a vacation home to stay in. The demand for these types of homes increased at a rapid pace where the supply was unable to keep up with the demand, which resulted in higher final prices. The result from the statistic investigations shows that the prices on vacation homes in Orust kommun increased by around 25 % during the pandemic.

The price of oil has changed a lot throughout history. What is often behind the large fluctuations in the oil price are due to the world economy, trade barriers, disturbances in supply chains and wars in the rest of the world. This paper analyzes the effects of the oil price on Sweden's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The study is based on a time which extends from January (Q1) 1999 to December (Q4) 2020. The methods that have been used are Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regressions and the statistics are based on quarterly data. The purpose of the thesis is to examine how Sweden's GDP, as a small oil-importing country, is affected by the oil price and its changes. The variables used to carry out the work are Sweden's GDP, the central bank interest rate, employment, population growth and oil price. The results from the OLS-regression confirm that all selected variables have an explanatory power on GDP. The result regarding the oil price indicates that the oil price, in the long run, has an impact on Sweden's GDP. This result is in line with what similar studies have concluded, namely that the oil price and its impact have a certain time delay.

Sweden has, among many other European countries, struggled with high levels of youth unemployment. As a solution to this arising problem the government decided to implement a two-step reform that lowered the payroll taxes paid by the employer, affecting adolescents between 15 and 26. Earlier research on similar reforms has shown small, or no effects on the employment but in some cases shown positive impacts on wage levels. Research has also shown that youth unemployment levels are significantly more sensitive for changes in the business cycle than the adult unemployment levels.

In this paper, we examine the effects on youth unemployment levels by the lowering of the payroll taxes by including data from SCB, Riksbanken and OECD covering the years 2005 to 2017. The model used includes the youth unemployment level, real GDP, Term of Trade, real interest rate, inflation, tax wedge and a dummy variable for the payroll tax cut that assumes the value 1 between the period 2007Q2 and 2016Q2.

The results show no significant effects of the payroll tax cut, as well as for the other variables within the model except for a tiny significant effect of GDP.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how stock market developments and other macroeconomic factors affect the number of IPOs on the Swedish stock market between 2010 and 2021. The Swedish stock market are attracting for investors all over the world. The latest numbers from Bloomberg (2021) show that the Swedish stock market are the biggest market in Europe, with 950 registered firms.

The subject is important to understand why initial public offerings has increased so rapidly since the pandemic started early 2020. To make the analysis we will make a multiple regression using the autoregressive distributed lag model (ADL) for the period 2010 – 2021. The changes in number of IPO’s will be used as the dependent variable with explanatory variables such as interest rate, saving rate, stock index, inflation, and GDP.

The study refers to interesting literature studies with similar regressions as the study performs, some with similar results but also some differences. The result shows that there is a significant relationship between the changes in number of IPO’s andsaving rate, stock index and the IPO’s lagged one period.

This paper examines the performance of 15 Swedish index stock funds and 30 Swedish actively managed mutual stock funds during the period 27th of March 1995 to 27th of March 2015, from and investor's perspective. Specifically we use Jensen's alpha and capital asset pricing model (CAPM) to examine fund performance. The result indicates that actively managed funds in Sweden do not outperform index funds, according to Jensen's alpha and beta. Actively managed funds are thus not worth their extra management fees and costs.

When regional growth studies are conducted, a common measure of economic growth is the wage sum. One reason for this may be the limited access to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) data on regional level. However, in Sweden there exists GDP data on municipal level, which enables studies where the effects of using GDP data or wage data can be compared. The aim of the present study is to investigate the difference the use of the measures GMP (Gross Municipal Product) and the sum of wages has on growth models. Since the two measures are similar but not identical the choice of measure of growth can influence the conclusions of an investigation. This might lead to contradictory results on for instance how knowledge activities influence economic growth. Therefore an empirical investigation on Swedish data is conducted in order test whether or not the use of GMP and wage sum respectively in a regional economic growth model give rise to different results. GMP and wage sum data on municipality level are used to calculate two output measures; percentage change and percentage change per employee in two different time periods. Local, intra-regional and inter-regional accessibility to R&D are the main explanatory variables used in the model. The results indicate that the models using any version of change in wage sum as dependent variable has more statistically significant parameters than the corresponding model using change in GMP.

Growth and regional growth are regularly concepts of current interest. Studies of regional growth have been conducted by numerous scholars but the way that the growth concept is defined and the way it is measured varies a great deal. Lack of proper regional data may be a reason why this discrepancy occurs. Economic growth is closely related to the industrial structure, health, and demography and income distribution of the economy. The measure used for national economic growth is the change in gross domestic product (GDP). GDP measures the value added of all goods and services produced in the economy. The production of goods and services generates primary incomes for households; another method of measuring GDP is therefore to add up all incomes. One part of this income consists of the sum of all wages paid to households. Hence wage sum data are sometimes used as an alternative measure of economic growth. There are different ways to use GDP and wage sum data to measure economic growth at the regional level. In Sweden, the gross regional product (GRP) change is used by Statistics Sweden and Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. The Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis (Growth Analysis) on the other hand uses changes in labor productivity as a measure of economic growth in regions. Growth analysis then uses wage sum per employee or wage sum per capita as an estimator of labor productivity.

This study investigate how the effect of cross border activities between Sweden and its three Nordic neighbours influence the Swedish local economies along the border using municipal data from 2009. Two measures for the local economies are examined, economic activity (measured by gross pay per inhabitant) and employment rates. The Swedish border regions where divided into four regions: The Swedish border to Finland, The Swedish border to the part of Norway not included in the Oslo labour market, The Swedish border to the Oslo labour market, and the Swedish-Danish border region. The regression models show how the the regions compare to the Swedish average when controlled for market structure and accessibility to population. For Sweden's border regions to Denmark and the Oslo labour market there are significant improvements in both economic activity and employment rates when the border activity is included. The improvement is highest for the Oslo border regions. For the Swedish border to Finland and to the part of Norway not included inte the Olso labour market the border activity has no significant influence on either economic activity or employment rates.

This paper explores different definitions of Economic Development and possible measures for Economic Development and how they relate to measures commonly used for studying Economic Growth. The data is from 2013 and 2014 and are found in official Swedish data repositories and include variables such as gross pay per inhabitant, citizen satisfaction with the municipal, Gini-coefficient for Swedish municipals. Our main conclusions are that indicators for Economic Growth and Economic Development in some cases move in opposite directions and hence that driving growth might diminish parts of the development.

This chapter explores possible measures of economic development and how they relate to measures commonly used for studying economic growth. Since potential factors for measuring economic development typically differ greatly over large geographical areas, we will study the indicators on a municipality level to avoid large geographical units of analysis. The data is from 2013 and 2014 and is found in official Swedish data repositories, and include variables such as gross pay per employee, citizen satisfaction with the municipality and Gini-coefficient for Swedish municipals. The results indicate that trying to find one overall measure for economic development is not feasible. Our main conclusions are that indicators for economic growth and economic development in some cases move in opposite directions. There is a need for more direct and harmonized, national and international data to further drive the research in the field of economic development.

While border regions are peripheral areas on a national scale, they gain a more central position in the actual border region, due to their location at the interface of domestic and foreign markets. It is a specific location advantage for firms located in border regions that they are close to foreign labour markets making it easier to employ workers from abroad. An increased labour mobility results in a pooling of workers from both sides of the border. With few border impediments, the labour markets located on the two sides of the border might melt into a common labour market, allowing a more efficient allocation of labour. The aim of this study is to examine to what extent economic productivity (gross pay) in the border regions between Sweden and Norway is affected by accessibility to highly educated labour. The southern border between Norway and Sweden is interesting to study since, on the Norwegian side of the border, the local labor market region Sør-Østfold is a neighboring region to the Oslo region, while on the Swedish side of the border, the regions are more considered to be rural areas. As main result we show that the parts of productivity generated by the cross-border workforce is shown to be driven by the accessibility of cross-border human capital both for municipals with an influx of foreign workforce and for the municipals with an outflow of workforce to a foreign country.

Using variable selections methods this paper examines variables potentially suitable as indicators for different dimensions of economic development. Since potential factors for measuring economic development typically will differ greatly over large geographical areas the study use indicators on municipality level to avoid large geographical units of analysis. The analysis is performed on Swedish municipality data from 2015. An extensive search yielded a number of prospects indicators to use even though the official data gathered in Sweden are not particularly suitable for investigating the softer dimensions of economic development. The results of the study suggest that the indicators of economic development can be categorized into five dimensions/indices that represent "Quality of Living", "Economic Capacity", "Wealth and Stability", "Growing Worries" and "GMP per inhabitant" in the municipality

Using variable selections methods this chapter examines variables potentially suitable as indicators for different dimensions of economic development. Since potential factors for measuring economic development typically will differ greatly over large geographical areas, the study uses indicators on municipality level to avoid large geographical units of analysis. The analysis is performed on Swedish municipality data from 2015. An extensive search yielded a number of prospective indicators to use even though the official data gathered in Sweden are not particularly suitable for investigating the softer dimensions of economic development. The results of the study suggest that the indicators of economic development can be categorized into five dimensions/indices that represent: "Quality of Living", "Economic Capacity", "Wealth and Stability", "Growing Worries" and "Gross Municipal Product per inhabitant" in the municipality.

The main purpose in this paper is to study to what extent accessibility to R&D is an important factor of explaining municipal economic growth. Of special interests is the question whether, the effect of company (private) R&D efforts on economic growth differ if a university college is present in the municipality or not. Therefore the empirical analysis is conducted on a reduced dataset (92 out of 290 municipalities), containing only middle-sized municipalities without traditional ´old´ universities. The idea of the selection process was to find two sets of comparable municipalities with one containing municipalities with university colleges and one with municipalities without university colleges. In the empirical analysis a knowledge production function is estimated with the difference in Gross Municipal Product, GMP, between 1993 and 2001 as the output. In order to account for the importance of proximity, the explanatory variables are expressed as accessibilities to university and company R&D. The total accessibility is then decomposed into local, intra-regional and inter-regional accessibility to R&D. The main results show that local and intra-regional accessibility to company R&D has positive effects on economic growth. On the other hand, local accessibility to university R&D is of no importance, while there are influential effects of intra-regional university R&D. Moreover, the presence of university college R&D activities decreases the importance of the local accessibilitiy to company R&D or put it differently, local accessibility to company R&D is more important in municipalitites without university college activities.

The level of indebtedness of Swedish households seems to be an upwards going spiral which has no end to it. Warnings are frequently announced from governmental institutions as other sources and the risk households undertake can cause damage not only to the individual household but to the whole economy. If housing prices begin to decrease during a recession, i.e. a housing bubble would start to deflate, it could take a long time for the economy to stabilize. The growing household debt ratio might provide even more fuel to the potential fire. What this thesis is aiming to do is to give better understanding of how Swedish households' indebtedness is composed, or more precisely what might cause it to increase in the way it does. Especially factors beside the disposable income is in focus since the debt to income ratio has risen substantially over the past few decades. An empirical, quantitative analysis is carried out using an OLS multiple regression model and an Error Correction model. Economic theory and insights from previous studies are used as a justification to the variables in the model. The analysis points at development of new properties, increasing housing prices, inflation and rising consumption as being possible explanatory factors in the estimated model. The time series analysis is made using quarterly data with observations of the years 1996 – 2015.

The purpose of this study was to investigate if the relative Purchasing Power Parity holds for the Chines exchange rate since the reform on their currency in year 1994. Comparisons were made with Chinas three largest trade partners USA, UK and Germany between the years 1994 to 2013. Stationary and cointegration has been controlled on all variables in order to proceed to regression tests for the monthly data. We used data for the countries consumer price index, nominal exchange rate and real exchange-rate. The result of the study showed that the relative Purchasing Power Parity does not hold. We also used diagrams of the real exchange rate for a simplified test. These also showed that neither absolute nor relative Purchasing Power Parity holds.

The elimination of exchange rate risk and overall integration of the European equity markets have created new opportunities to utilize industry-specific diversification strategies for portfolio and risk management decisions. Using daily return data for five major industries in the Euro area over the period, 2001-2012, our findings show that an industry-specific three-factor Fama and French type model provides a robust explanation of security returns. While, our results further emphasize the widespread influence of the “value” and “size” premiums in the Euro area, we show that the pattern, sign, size, and significance of these factors vary widely across different industries and during the “bull” (2003-2007) and “bear” (2007-2009) market conditions. The size premium predominantly plays a positive, stable and significant role in explaining security returns under different market conditions. On the other hand, the results for the value premium is not convincing. Its estimated coefficients are both positive and significant (30% of all cases), and negative and significant (66% of all cases). Nor does our results provide convincing evidence for the conventional risk-based argument in support of the existence of size and value premiums in the Euro area. Value stocks are generally associated with higher betas than those of growth stocks only during the bear market condition. The betas for small caps are consistently lower than those for the large caps. Finally, the momentum effect does not appear to play a strong rule in explaining security returns in the Euro area.

The objectives of this paper are, first, to estimate the long-run cost of equity capital for the banking sector using data from the Eurozone, US, UK, Sweden and Switzerland for the period 1999-2014. Our inference differs from that of previous studies because we employ a dynamic panel GMM model with a fixed effect and a multi-factor asset pricing framework to explain the variation of the cost of equity capital across banks in terms of risk-factors including, bank size, leverage, business cycle and regulations. Second, this model analyzes whether the cost of equity of banks in Eurozone differs from banks’ cost of equity in the U.S. Our findings show that the multi-factor asset pricing framework does provide a robust explanation of the cost of equity for banking sector. Our findings are consistent with those of IIF (2011) in that a higher leverage ratio, an increase in capital requirement and regulation resulting in an increase of the cost of equity in the banking sector. However, the pattern, sign, size, and significance of these factors vary widely between the Eurozone and the US

This paper analyses the impact of the Euro on the development of equity markets in the Euro area and compares the results with those of the United States, UK, and Japan. Specifically, using data on 11 EMU countries from 1990-2010, we examine the impact of the Euro on different measures of stock market size, market liquidity, and concentration. It then uses a variety of ARFIMA and GARCH models to test whether the volatility returns have decreased following the introduction of the Euro. We found that the Euro enhances the depth and the liquidity in Euro area equity markets and that concentration and the unconditional volatility of returns have significantly increased in most Euro area equity markets. Furthermore, although our results identify the United States, Italy, Greece, and Euronext as the fastest growing markets on aggregate, it identifies Ireland and Germany as the lowest growing markets when information on market size, liquidity measures, volatility, and concentration measures.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the presence of a housing bubble using Swedish data from 1986Q1-2016Q4 by using various methods. Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors use affordability indicators and asset-pricing approaches, including the price-to-income ratio, price-to-rent ratio and user cost, supplemented by a qualitative discussion of other factors affecting house prices. Second, the authors use cointegration techniques to compute the fundamental (or long-run) price, which is then compared with the actual price to test the degree of Sweden'€™s housing price bubble during the studied period. Third, they apply the univariate right-tailed unit root test procedure to capture bursting bubbles and to date-stamp bubbles. Findings The authors find evidence for rational housing bubbles with explosive behavioral components beginning in 2004. These bubbles do not continuously diverge but instead periodically revert to their fundamental value. However, the deviation is persistent, and without any policy correction, it takes decades for real house prices to return to equilibrium.Originality/value The policy implication is that monetary policy designed to contain mortgage demand and thereby prevent burst episodes in the housing market must address external imbalances, as revealed in real exchange rate undervaluation. It is unlikely that current policies will stop the rise of house prices, as the growth of mortgage credit, improvement in Sweden’s international competitiveness and the path of interest rates are much more important factors.

Purpose

This paper aims to assess the long-run drivers and short-term dynamics of real house prices in Sweden for 1986Q1 to 2016Q4. More specifically, the author examines the extent to which real house prices are determined by affordability, demographics and asset price factors.

Design/methodology/approach

The author conducts a cointegration analysis and applies a vector autoregression model to examine the long- and short-run responsiveness of Swedish real house prices to a number of key categories of fundamental variables.

Findings

The empirical results indicate that house prices will increase in the long run by 1.04 per cent in response to a 1 per cent increase in household real disposable income, whereas real after-tax mortgage interest and real effective exchange rates show average long-term effects of approximately – 8 and – 0.7 per cent, respectively. In addition, the results show that the growth of real house prices is affected by growth in mortgage credit, real after-tax mortgage interest rates and disposable incomes in the short run, whereas the real effective exchange rate is the most significant determinant of Swedish real house appreciation.

Originality/value

The impact of the two lending restrictions been implemented after the financial crisis – the mortgage cap in October 2010 and the amortization requirement in June 2016 – are ineffective to stabilize the housing market. This suggests that macroprudential measures designed to ease pressure on housing prices and reduce risks to financial stability need to focus on these fundamentals and address the issues of tax deductibility on mortgage rates and the gradual implementation of debt-to-income limits to contain mortgage demand and improve households' resilience to shocks.

This paper uses cointegration and vector autoregressive (VAR) model to investigate the long-run drivers and short-term dynamics of the real house prices in Sweden forthe period 1986Q to 1995Q4. Specifically, we examine the extent to which real houseprices are determined by affordability, demographic, and asset price factors. The empirical results indicate house prices to increase in the long-run by 0.8% in response to a 1% increase in household's real disposable income, while after tax mortgage interest rate and real effective exchange rate show average long-term effects of approximately - 1% and - 5.3%, respectively. Suggesting that fiscal policy aimed todampen real house appreciation needs to adress the issue of tax deductibility onmortgage rate. In addition, our results indicate that the growth of real house prices is affected by the growth of mortgage credit, after tax mortgage interest rate and disposable income in the short run, and among which the real effective exchange rateis the most significant determinant behind Swedish real house appreciation.

Using GMM model and data from 11 Euro Area countries and 5 non-Euro countries over the period 1989 to 2011, we explore the nonlinear effects of financial development on the performance of Euro Area economy that is: its growth, capital accumulation, investment and productivity. Four measures of financial developments are examined, namely, liquidity, size, volatility and bank’s loans to private enterprises. Special consideration is devoted to modeling threshold effects of public debt that has increased substantially in recent years in several Euro countries. We found that the effect of stock market size is always positive whether we consider the level of real per capita income or its growth. However, the effect of banking sector, volatility, liquidity and public debt are generally negative. In addition, we find support for the channels of investment, saving, total factor productivity, and capital intensity. For all the four channels, the results indicate a significant negative link between banking development and volatility of stock returns. The impact of debt on growth seems to be negative with the turning point of public debt likely to be between 45-65%.

We use a pooled panel bootstrap procedure and different benchmark models of performance to investigate presence of skill in mutual fund performance across different investment styles based on Swedish data from February 2007 to March 2015. To check robustness, we apply serial correlation, unit root, and variance ratio tests to examine the predictability and market efficiency of gross and net excess returns. The results suggest that Swedish funds underperform their benchmarks, net of costs. In addition, very few managers outperform the market, and too many managers underperform the market due to good and bad skills rather than good or bad luck. © 2016 Elsevier Inc.

This paper examines the implications of the adoption of the euro and the resulting monetary policy integration for investors in the Euro area in terms of stock market diversification. In particular, we study the difference between investment strategies based on country indices and on sector indices. In addition, we use GARCH-M to model return and volatility for the daily sectoral euro equity indices from 1992 to 2009 to analyze how and to what extent volatility in the sector equity index is driven by shocks occurring in the US, aggregate European equity index, aggregate Euro Zone equity index, and the global equity index. We find strong evidence that diversification over sectors yields more efficient portfolios than diversification over countries and that the volatility spillover of the aggregated Euro zone equity return index on the sectoral equity return index has increased after the launch of the euro. © 2011 International Atlantic Economic Society 

This paper investigates whether value and size premia exist in the Euro area’s industry returns and, if so, what factors are driving them. We use a Garch-M (1,1) model on daily return data from the STOXX market indices for five major industries in the euro area. Our findings show that an industry-specific three-factor Fama and French type model does provide a robust explanation of returns over the period, 2001-2012. While, our results further emphasize the widespread influence of the value and size effects in the Euro market, the pattern, sign, size, and significance of these factors vary widely across different industries and market conditions.

This essay, factors that affect Sweden's growth, contains reasoning and conclusions on how the Swedish GDP has been affected due to the corona pandemic. In the essay, the financial crisis during the period 2007 and 2008 will be expressed in order to be able to compare the Swedish GDP with another economic crisis. The essay contains previous research on the subject and a theoretical framework where the theory behind the method is explained. The model that is set up is based on the macroeconomic expenditure method where variables that affect GDP are included. This method has been used in the essay to show how GDP has changed from previous years and to be able to see what a comparison looks like with the previous financial crisis. The results are presented in various diagrams that show how the variables consumption, government expenditure, investment, export and import, vary over the period 1993–2020. The Vector autoregression (VAR) model has been used in the essay as a method. The conclusion of the thesis is that the variables that have the greatest impact and the greatest correlation on Sweden's GDP are consumption and export.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how the financial crisis in 2007-2008 in the US influenced the Swedish export. The chosen model includes the following variables: total exports, foreign real GDP, export price and the export-weighted effective exchange rate against the Swedish krona. The model is taken from Aydin et al (2004) which in turn has developed the model from Warner and Kreinin (1983). Aydın et al (2004) have used this model in its report to explain the Turkish export supply and import demand. Except the variables in the model it has been added another variable, bank lending to non-financial companies. This variable has been added in order to investigate whether Sweden's exports were affected by a financial crisis in Sweden during this period.In the paper, there will be six different regressions, two showing how the Swedish export looked like before the crisis broke out, two during the crisis and two regressions from 2000 until 2014. This is to clarify how the export was affected by year to year. The last variable that was the Swedish banks' lending to non-financial companies showed no significance to the Swedish imports which then meant that it was concluded, the Swedish exports therefore had no impact of the financial crisis that was in Sweden.

Knowledge and creativity are increasingsly important factors for economic growth. Changes in the economic landscape mean that the location of human capacity becomes a key aspect for knowledge creation and regional economic growth. This article discusses the influence of political-economic structures and the importance of the creative human capital, in relation to the development and localisation of a government supported regional film industry in Sweden. The overall aim for initialising these regional film production centres is to enhance regional economic growth in new creative industrial sectors that can replace and/or supplement the traditional industry in the respective region. This article argues that this kind of creative industry is generally most likely to be mor successful in locations that can provide financial support and attract the key creative human capital. Regions with high population density and diversified economy will thereby be the best suited.