News

Joacim Tåg defended his thesis at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, in 2008 on the topic of business strategies, competition policy and regulation in the telecommunications, media and technology industries. At IFN, Joacim will primarily work within the entrepreneurship program on issues related to the real economy effects of private equity buyouts, to ownership patterns in the economy and to entrepreneurial innovations.
 

On December 5–6, 2008, IFN, The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Globalisation and Economic Policy and CIBER at Michigan State University arranged a workshop on globalization and labor markets. Trade models with heterogeneous firms have been a major focus of research for the past decade. More recently, some trade theorists have begun to enrich these models by incorporating heterogeneity in the labor market as well. Such research holds the potential to uncover connections between the nexus of worker and firm decisions with characteristics of the global environment. The idea of the workshop was to bring together a small group of theorists who are working on such models with empiricists who are familiar with matched worker-firm data sources.

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At a seminar on 23 October 2008, IFN and its partners FSF and Nutek launched the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. The award, which will be given annually, honors outstanding research contributions furthering our understanding of the role and importance of entrepreneurship and small business development. The research award, which is the foremost in its kind in the world, consists of a prize sum of 100 000 Euros and the statuette “The Hand of God”, created by Carl Milles. The extensive prize sum has become possible thanks to a generous donation by the Swedish entrepreneur and industrialist Rune Andersson and his holding company Mellby Gård.
 
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IFN has invited international researchers working on foreign direct investment in East Asia for a two-day workshop in Stockholm. East Asia is a major receiver of FDI and the participants will discuss how these inflows of foreign multinational firms affect producer concentration, productivity, exports, employment and other important economic factors. The focus was on the development in six East Asian countries: China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. 

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Pär Holmberg defended his thesis at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, in 2005 with a dissertation on strategic bidding behaviour in electricity markets. After the dissertation Pär worked with corporate taxation at the Ministry of Finance and later as a research fellow at Uppsala University. Before his career in economics, Pär Holmberg defended a dissertation in Power Engineering at Uppsala University and worked as a research scientist at ABB Corporate Research. At IFN, Pär Holmberg will work in the research program The Economics of Electricity Markets.

Frédéric Delmar is a professor in entrepreneurship at the Strategy and Organization Department at EM Lyon since 2005. He took his PhD at Stockholm school of Economics in 1996. His main research interest lies in the early development of new ventures as well as organizational growth. He finds the behavioral aspects of entrepreneurship to be particularly interesting.

His work has been published in a number of journals like Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Organization, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and books.

From August 1, Mikael Stenkula is again a member of the IFN staff. Mikael Stenkula defended his doctoral thesis at Lund University in 2004 with a dissertation on monetary economics. His main research interests are in entrepreneurship and business dynamics and the importance of the institutional framework for economic development. Together with Magnus Henrekson, Mikael Stenkula has written the Swedish book Entrepreneurship.

Erik Lindqvist, IFN, was awarded a Young Economist Award at the EEA Annual Meeting in Milan for his paper "Privatization of Credence Goods: Theory and Evidence from Residential Youth Care".  The prize is awarded to outstanding papers by applicants under 30 years of age .

Henrik Jordahl, IFN, has been awarded the 2008 Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize for his paper "Selfish and Prospective: Theory and Evidence of Pocketbook Voting" (co-authors Mikael Elinder and Panu Poutvaara). The price ceremony took place at the 64th Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF) in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

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IFN invited international researchers working on the economics of privatization to a two-day workshop in Stockholm. Privatization is broadly defined and includes theoretical and empirical perspectives on topics such as contracting for government services, public procurement, voucher systems, public-private partnerships, and the sale of government-owned companies. Steven Kelman of Harvard University presented his book Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government at the workshop. 

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The overall purpose of this two-day workshop in Stockholm was to stimulate cooperation and exchange of knowledge among Nordic researchers contributing to the field of electricity economics. Keynote addresses were held by professor Richard Green at University of Birmingham and professor Frank A. Wolak at Stanford.

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Family, Children and Work was the theme for the IFN Stockholm Conference 2008, which took place in Vaxholm in the Stockholm Archipelago on May 22–23.

An aging population and a declining birthrate have made the access to qualified work force a burning issue within most OECD countries. The conditions for combining career and family life are today as much a question about supply of human capital as equality and well-being for parents and children. About 20 leading international researchers presented and discussed high quality empirical and theoretical research on this topic.

Please contact Ph.D. Anna Sjögren in the organization committee for further information.

On May 12, 2008, IFN and the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) organized a one-day workshop on income distribution for specially invited researchers. Among the participants were Andrew Leigh, Australian National University, who also was a guest researcher at IFN on May 9–16, Rolf Aaberge, Statistics Norway, and Björn Gustafsson, Gothenburg University. Organizers were Daniel Waldenström, IFN, and Anders Björklund, SOFI. For further information please contact Daniel Waldenström.

Harald Edquist has a Ph.D. in Economic History from the Stockholm School of Economics. The focus of his research has been on comparative productivity development and the impact of new technology on productivity growth. At IFN he will take part in an international collaboration project studying competitiveness, innovation and intangible investment. Prior to joining IFN, he was a research director at SNS – The Swedish Center for Business and Policy Studies.

Richard Friberg is an Associate Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and will be visiting IFN until the end of May. The focus of his work is mainly on empirical Industrial Organization and International Economics. During his stay at IFN he will amongst other things do research on strategic behavior around mergers.

Henrik Jordahl has been given the title of Associate Professor (“Docent”) at Uppsala University. He earned his PhD from this university in 2002 and is presently supervising two graduate students at its Department of Economics.

Erik Lindqvist received his Ph.D. from Stockholm School of Economics in October 2007. The main paper in his dissertation studied privatization of residential youth care for teenagers with social problems. The focus of his research is on issues within organizational economics and political economics, but he is also interested in labor economics and demography.

IFN has initiated a new research program "The Economics of Electricity markets." this fall. The purpose is to analyse the functioning, structure and regulation of electricity markets. The program is jointly financed by the three large Swedish electricity suppliers Vattenfall, Fortum and E.ON., the Swedish system operator Svenska Kraftnät, as well as the consumer goods and paper company SCA. Ph.D. Thomas Tangerås and Ph.D Sven-Olof Fridolfsson are responsible for developing the program.

On September 10–11, IFN organized a workshop on the interaction between firms with different forms of ownership in the innovation and development process. The focus was on and how legislation, e.g. patent law, competition law, sector-specific regulation and taxation, affects this process. The participants consisted of a limited group of researchers within this specific area of interest.

To the conference site

The Swedish interest in Japan is low. The country does neither appear in the companies’ expansion plans, nor in the media reports, though Japan is the second biggest economy in the world, its positive growth and a dynamic integration with China. The question is whether the Swedish companies take advantage of the potential that exists in Japan.

Professor Naoyuki Yoshino, Keio University, Tokyo, and Mattias Bergman, Vice President Asia, the Swedish Trade Council, are invited speakers at the seminar. Professor Fredrik Sjöholm, IFN, will lead the discussions.