News

On Tuesday a new research report was presented – Welfare services: licensing, supervision and monitoring, authored by Eva Hagbjer. The report is published by SNS (Centre for Business and Policy Studies) within the framework of the joint project between IFN and SNS From Welfare State to Welfare Society. In the report the rules that ensure quality of welfare services are identified. Eva Lindström commented on the report saying that “it's impressive". Lindström is chairperson of a committee on ownership assessment (ägarprövningutredningen) with the mission to propose requirements that may be imposed on owners in the welfare sector.

During 2014 Richard Öhrvall, Statistics Sweden (SCB) and IFN, will be blogging about the upcoming elections in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. The blog's title is Three hundred and twelve. Why? "During 2014 we have 312 elections: Elections in 290 municipalities, 20 county councils/regions, Swedish parliament and the European parliament," explains Richard Öhrvall who is at the same time writing his thesis in political science at Linköping University. The subject is political participation.
 

Gabriel Sahlgren, Research Director at the Centre for Market Reform of Education, London, and affiliated researcher at IFN will speak before the British Education Committee in parliament on Wednesday March 19. The topic is "Academies and free schools". The purpose of the session "is to explore whether academisation has had a positive impact on student attainment."

The IAEE Best Paper Awards committee has selected a working paper authored by Sara Fogelberg and Ewa Lazarczyk, both IFN, to receive a student paper award at the 37th IAEE International Conference. In addition to this award Sara Fogelberg and Ewa Lazarczyk will compete with three further recipients for the “Best Paper Award” that will be revealed at conference in June 2014. The title of the paper is “Strategic Withholding through Production Failures in the Nordic Electricity Market, Nord Pool”.

The 2014 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research is awarded to Professor Shaker Zahra, Professor of Strategy and Robert E. Buuck Chair of Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Global Award  is the leading international award in entrepreneurship research with a prize sum of EUR 100 000.

The World Bank on behalf of the Swedish Government has conducted a study of the business environment. On Monday the first part of the report was presented at a seminar in Stockholm. Augusto Lopez - Claros from the World Bank explained that Sweden is doing well, but there is room for improvement. Magnus Henrekson , IFN , commented on the report. He was content that the government now is looking into employee stock options – to facilitate start-ups. At the same time he considers the education system to be the most worrisome sector for continued growth.

Henrik Jordahl, IFN, and Mats Bergman, Södertörn University, unveiled on Thursday a new report on the Swedish market for elderly care. They reckon that "both home care and assisted living facilities [appear] as relatively appropriate to privatize." The two researchers believe that a return to public monopoly is not an answer to today’s obstacles and that the current system works fairly well but needs further improvement.

The Economist blogg "Democracy in America" notes that when President Obama announced that Maria Contreras-Sweet would be his nominee to head the Small Business Administration (SBA) he extolled the virtues of small firms. They are “the lifeblood of our economy”, President Obama said. Observing that there are two kinds of small business owners The Economist refers to a study by the IFN-economists Magnus Henrekson and Tino Sanandaji.

The report Patentboxar som indirekt FOU-stöd (Patent boxes as indirect R & D support) is authored by Roger Svensson, IFN, and was presented by Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum at a seminar on February 6. The author shows that patent boxes are hardly a tax incentive that Sweden should introduce. It turns out that patent boxes do not necessarily create more R & D investment in the host country, and in addition this form of incentives allows for possibly increased international tax evasion.

“Small business activity does not measure entrepreneurship” is the title of an article by Magnus Henrekson and Tino Sanandaji, both IFN, published in the prestigious American scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The two researchers discuss Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, referring to growing and innovative firms: “In empirical research the rate of entrepreneurship is commonly estimated using the self-employment rate or other measures of small business activity. We argue that this empirical strategy gives rise to misleading inferences regarding Schumpeterian entrepreneurship.”
 

Research fellows at IFN regularly participate as speakers and discussants in events organized externally. During the current week IFN-researchers will participate in a number of such events, for example: Magnus Henrekson, who has co-authored a book about taxes for the 21st century, will take part in the presentation of the book. Assar Lindbeck will speak about deregulation of the housing market at a seminar organized by the Bokriskommittén, and Andreas Bergh, will travel to Brussels to discuss EU's migration policy.

The IT crash at the beginning of the 2000s "meant that the names entrepreneur and entrepreneurship lost its luster" writes Magnus Henrekson in the preface to the Swedish translation of Josh Lerner's book Boulevard of Broken Dreams : Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed - and What to Do About It . Henrekson argues that entrepreneurship is more and wider than today’s more popular term innovation. He warns against "misdirected" government assistance and believes that the Swedish Government’s VC firms Fouriertransform and Inlandsinnovation "in fact, are industrial and regional aid in disguise."
 

In a European perspective the Swedish economy is performing well. How come? Professor Magnus Henrekson, IFN, is interviewed by the Fjärde Uppgiften about what might make a country successful. One of the main reasons for the Swedish success, he claims, is that “we had our crisis in the 90's and implemented necessary reforms, which others have failed to carry through”.

When testing why immigrants are less likely than natives to be working in most OECD-countries, Andreas Bergh, IFN, finds two significant patterns. First, welfare state generosity keeps immigrants away from the labor force. Second, given that immigrants enter the labor force, collective bargaining agreements explain immigrant unemployment.

Alexander Ljungqvist , Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at New York University's Stern School of Business and affiliated to IFN , launched a breakfast seminar entitled The Decline and Fall of the Stock Market . Primarily he explained how the U.S. market works and explained that the number of IPOs have become fewer, yet larger . Alexander Ljungqvist's introduction was followed by comments by Börje Ekholm, CEO of Investor and Chairman of NASDAQ OMX and Magnus Billing, CEO of NASDAQ OMX in Stockholm.

An economy does not function in a vacuum but consists of people of flesh and blood, with moral values, with attitudes towards their fellow human beings and with an ability to be affected by laws, rules and norms. A new research program at IFN studies how such factors influence human behavior and, thereby, the way the economy functions – but also how the economy in turn influences morality, norms and social attitudes.

At a November 13 seminar, Henrik Jordahl of IFN presented a brand new research report, Välfärdstjänster i Privat Regi: Framväxt och Drivkrafter (Welfare Services under Private Management: Rise and Driving Forces). This seminar was part of an initiative between IFN and SNS:  From a Welfare State to a Welfare Society. The report, of which Jordahl is the editor, discusses the circumstances under which Swedish municipalities have privatized tax funded production of welfare services.

Magnus Henrekson, IFN, has in cooperation with Harald Edquist, Fores, written a chapter in a new book with the self-explanatory title What can we learn from economic reforms in Greece and Sweden?. The said chapter is about product market reforms and incentives to innovate in Sweden. The authors suggest a number of reforms to enhance economic developments in Sweden, including increased government support for venture capital in early-stage funding and increased R&D resources for SMEs.

For the first time the entire Swedish tax system has been mapped systematically from 1862 to the present day. "It's a vast project. For four years a number of scientists under the leadership of Dr. Mikael Stenkula, IFN, have studied the subject," explained Magnus Henrekson , director of the institute. The main results from the first segment – about labour income taxation – have recently been published in Scandinavian Economic History Review.