Growth In Sweden Research Articles

Categorization, identification, and analysis of barriers to market growth in biogas solutions – The case of Sweden

Market growth for biogas solutions is important for climate change mitigation since it enables both effective waste management and a reduction of fossil fuel use. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, based on a discussion on previous research, a categorization of barriers to market growth in biogas solutions is developed. Second, the categorization is used to identify and analyze barriers within the Swedish market. The results show that market growth in Sweden has been reduced by the presence of multiple barriers such as regulatory uncertainties related to taxes and public policy instruments, lack of public funding, lengthy permit and planning processes, increased competition from electrification, lack of communication about biogas benefits, lobbying against biofuels, too high a price on biogas, and fierce competition from fossil fuels. The paper concludes with a discussion of contributions and the managerial and policy implications.

Financial Market Development and Economic Growth in Sweden

Financial Market Development and Economic Growth in Sweden

Financial Market Development and Economic Growth in Sweden

Financial Market Development and Economic Growth in Sweden

240 years of Swedish terms of trade – structure, volatility, and connection to economic growth

In this paper we present new foreign trade- and price data to analyze Swedish terms of trade in the very long run, from 1780 to 2018. We examine what influenced the trend in the terms of trade in the long run, particularly in how it related to the general trade structure. We also analyze the volatility of the terms of trade, and discuss how it might have affected economic growth in Sweden. The index improved slowly but substantially over the century from 1850 to 1950, which was likely connected to another poignant trend, a steadily increasing share of manufactures and finished goods in the export basket. In comparative perspective, Sweden had more industrial exports and lower export concentration than most of the rest of the European periphery, as well as much lower terms of trade volatility. We find that the growth trend and low volatility of Swedish terms of trade was positively connected with economic growth, but only really so from about 1850 to 1913. During this period the development of the terms of trade was particularly connected to increasing investment in new industries. The years from 1914 to 1960 were on the other hand characterized by high volatility in the terms of trade, and was still connected to high growth rates, such as during the interwar period. Hence, we conclude that while low volatility was connected to the onset of Swedish industrialization, it was also possible to maintain high growth rates during periods of high terms of trade volatility.

Drivers of sustainable natural capital, forest capital, and green growth in Sweden: Rise and fall scenario of material productivity

Given Sweden’s impressive performance on green growth among the European Union countries, this study is focuses on examining the responses of green growth, sustainable natural capital, sustainable forest capital, and carbon footprint to environmental-related innovation and material productivity while employing population to control for unobserved forces. By employing the dataset that spans over 1970–2019 alongside using suitable econometric approaches, the short- and long-run relationships alongside the Granger causality evidence are provided. The revelation from the result shows that environmental-related innovation promotes sustainable natural capital (by elasticity of ∼ 0.04), promotes sustainable forest capital (by elasticity of ∼ 0.13), improves green growth (by elasticity of ∼ 0.01), but spur carbon footpint (by elasticity of ∼ 0.01) especially in the long-run. Importantly, the investigation further reveals that material productivity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with sustainable natural capital, sustainable forest capital, and carbon emission, thus affirming the validity of material productivity Kuznets curve (MPKC) i.e., rise and fall scenario of material productivity. Meanwhile, while population produces desirable carbon emission and green growth outcomes, it hampers both sustainable natural capital and sustainable forest capital especially in the long run. Given these results, relevant and implementable policy guidelines are highlighted for policy makers and other stakeholders in Sweden.

The asymmetric effects of renewable energy consumption and trade openness on carbon emissions in Sweden: new evidence from quantile-on-quantile regression approach.

With the passage of time, the continued burning of fossil fuels is proving to be one of the world's most serious issues. In response, the current research aims to assess the critical linkage between carbon emissions and renewable energy, trade openness, and economic growth in Sweden utilizing a dataset from 1965 to 2019. The study applied the novel quantile-on-quantile regression (QQ) approach to assess this relationship. The main objectives are to address the following questions: (i) What are the effects of trade openness on CO2 emissions in each quantile? (ii) Does renewable energy consumption mitigates CO2 emissions in each quantile? What is the impact of economic growth on CO2 emissions in each quantile? The outcomes from the QQ approach revealed that at low and medium quantiles (0.1-0.6), the effect of trade openness on CO2 emissions is negative. Furthermore, at lower and higher quantiles (0.1-0.90) of combination of renewable energy consumption and CO2 emissions, the effect of renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions is negative. Finally, at majority of the quantiles, the effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions is negative. Moreover, the present study applied the quantile regression (QR) approach as a robustness check. The findings of the QR validate the findings of the QQR approach. The study proposes that policy-makers in Sweden should place greater emphasis on raising public awareness regarding the issues of renewable energy since it mitigates environmental degradation.

Assessing mandatory stay-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID-19.

Background and AimsThe most restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID‐19 are mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closures. Given the consequences of these policies, it is important to assess their effects. We evaluate the effects on epidemic case growth of more restrictive NPIs (mrNPIs), above and beyond those of less‐restrictive NPIs (lrNPIs).MethodsWe first estimate COVID‐19 case growth in relation to any NPI implementation in subnational regions of 10 countries: England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the United States. Using first‐difference models with fixed effects, we isolate the effects of mrNPIs by subtracting the combined effects of lrNPIs and epidemic dynamics from all NPIs. We use case growth in Sweden and South Korea, 2 countries that did not implement mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closures, as comparison countries for the other 8 countries (16 total comparisons).ResultsImplementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs (Spain had a nonsignificant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country. In France, for example, the effect of mrNPIs was +7% (95% CI: −5%‐19%) when compared with Sweden and + 13% (−12%‐38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro‐contagion). The 95% confidence intervals excluded 30% declines in all 16 comparisons and 15% declines in 11/16 comparisons.ConclusionsWhile small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less‐restrictive interventions.

How Assad changed population growth in Sweden and Norway: Syrian refugees' impact on Nordic national and municipal demography.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the demographic effects of wars are not confined only to war zones and neighbouring areas; wars and conflicts may also change populations far away. Without the war in Syria under President Assad and the associated mass exodus of Syrian refugees, the population trends in distant countries like Sweden and Norway over the last few years would have been different. We create hypothetical scenarios of the population developments in Sweden and Norway without a war in Syria from 2011 onwards, where excess immigration due to the war and associated excess births are removed. The results indicate that population growth in 2016 would have been roughly 36% lower in Sweden and 26% lower in Norway without the Syrian war. The number of births in 2017 would have been about 3% lower in Sweden and 1% lower in Norway. One in ten municipalities would have had a population decline in 2016 instead of a population increase, and the largest immigrant group in Sweden by January 2019 would still be of Finnish origin.

Wages, Income Distribution and Economic Growth: Long-Run Perspectives in Scandinavia, 1900–2010

ABSTRACT This article views analysis of the influence of capital–labour income distribution on economic growth from a historical perspective, using data from 1900 onwards. We study the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, where conventional accounts of the postwar growth miracles in these small, open economies have emphasized the role of wage restraint, favouring profits and investment over consumption. Instead, we show that the 1950s and 1960s saw growing wage shares, and use the Bhaduri–Marglin model to econometrically analyse the effects on consumption, investment, exports and imports and the total effects on GDP. Furthermore, we estimate the effects of wage pressure on labour productivity. Growing wage shares have had a small positive effect on GDP growth in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and the positive effect was larger in the postwar period than in other times. However, the positive growth effects of wage pressure were modest as the demand was only weakly wage-led. In contrast, supply side effects were large. Labour productivity was stimulated by vigorous wage increases, as argued by the Swedish Rehn–Meidner model as well as by post-Keynesian economists. The present investigation opens several further avenues for research on the distribution–growth nexus.

Labour Shortages and Wage Growth

Tight labour markets are usually accompanied by mounting wage pressures. Yet, in the past decade, wage growth has remained subdued despite the appearance of widespread labour shortages. This paper re-examines labour market conditions since 2007 through the lens of a novel indicator, relative labour shortages (RLS), based on data from a large representative business survey in Sweden. Four main results emerge from the analysis: (1), the time-series average of RLS suggested much weaker labour market conditions during the 2013–2019 recovery from the Great Recession and during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 than qualitative surveys or the vacancy-unemployment ratio. (2), the reason is that RLS contains a time-varying intensive margin of labour shortages not recorded in most surveys, which has been trending downwards since the Great Recession. (3), fixed-effects regressions with several aggregate-, sector, region and establishment-level controls confirm that RLS is strongly and positively correlated with annual wage growth at the establishment level. (4), sector-level wage Phillips curves show that the subdued level of RLS can help explain the sluggish wage growth in Sweden since the Great Recession.

Why has Sweden risen in the IFPI league tables but been surpassed by South Korea? A comparative case study

Abstract Sweden has risen in the global music market charts since the early 2000s and has a substantial pool of music companies, songwriters, and artists. Nevertheless, over the last decade it has lost ground relative to South Korea in particular. By analyzing the factors associated with global music market strength among 20–50 countries and comparing Sweden and South Korea's comparative advantages and disadvantages, the current article underscores that intellectual property rights (e.g., r = 0.842), GDP per capita, (e.g., r = 0.754), and piracy rates (e.g., r = −0.699) correlate with music market size. Thus, South Korea (and China) has benefitted from overall economic growth whereas Sweden's growth rates are comparatively lower. Moreover, at the local level, South Korea has a more dominating market niche signified by both big and small K-pop companies that compete for demand and supply at the local (South Korea), regional (greater East Asia), and global levels of the music industries.

Heterogeneity in households’ expectations of housing prices – evidence from micro data

Expectations about future housing prices are arguably an important determinant of actual housing prices, and an important input in decisions on whether and how to transact in the housing market. Using micro-level survey data on Swedish households, we analyse households’ expectations of housing prices and how these expectations relate to the characteristics of the respondents. Results show that age is found to be significantly related to housing-price expectations, with the youngest households – whose adulthood largely corresponds to the extended period of rapid housing-price growth in Sweden – having the highest housing-price expectations. This is consistent with the hypothesis that expectations are influenced by personal experiences. Our findings suggest that aggregate measures of expectations might hide important features of the data, which could be of interest to policy makers when choosing regulatory actions or formulating macroprudential policies.

Protectionism and Economic Growth: Causal Evidence from the First Era of Globalization

We investigate how protectionist policies influence short-run economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. The protectionist government increased tariffs. We employ the synthetic control method to select control countries against which economic growth in Sweden can be compared. We do not find evidence suggesting that protectionist policies influenced economic growth and examine channels why. New tariff laws increased government revenue. However, the results do not suggest that the protectionist government stimulated the economy by increasing government expenditure.

The influence of soil properties and nutrients on conifer forest growth in Sweden, and the first steps in developing a nutrient availability metric

Abstract. The availability of nutrients is one of the factors that regulate terrestrial carbon cycling and modify ecosystem responses to environmental changes. Nonetheless, nutrient availability is often overlooked in climate–carbon cycle studies because it depends on the interplay of various soil factors that would ideally be comprised into metrics applicable at large spatial scales. Such metrics do not currently exist. Here, we use a Swedish forest inventory database that contains soil data and tree growth data for > 2500 forests across Sweden to (i) test which combination of soil factors best explains variation in tree growth, (ii) evaluate an existing metric of constraints on nutrient availability, and (iii) adjust this metric for boreal forest data. With (iii), we thus aimed to provide an adjustable nutrient metric, applicable for Sweden and with potential for elaboration to other regions. While taking into account confounding factors such as climate, N deposition, and soil oxygen availability, our analyses revealed that the soil organic carbon concentration (SOC) and the ratio of soil carbon to nitrogen (C : N) were the most important factors explaining variation in “normalized” (climate-independent) productivity (mean annual volume increment – m3 ha−1 yr−1) across Sweden. Normalized forest productivity was significantly negatively related to the soil C : N ratio (R2 = 0.02–0.13), while SOC exhibited an empirical optimum (R2 = 0.05–0.15). For the metric, we started from a (yet unvalidated) metric for constraints on nutrient availability that was previously developed by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA – Laxenburg, Austria) for evaluating potential productivity of arable land. This IIASA metric requires information on soil properties that are indicative of nutrient availability (SOC, soil texture, total exchangeable bases – TEB, and pH) and is based on theoretical considerations that are also generally valid for nonagricultural ecosystems. However, the IIASA metric was unrelated to normalized forest productivity across Sweden (R2 = 0.00–0.01) because the soil factors under consideration were not optimally implemented according to the Swedish data, and because the soil C : N ratio was not included. Using two methods (each one based on a different way of normalizing productivity for climate), we adjusted this metric by incorporating soil C : N and modifying the relationship between SOC and nutrient availability in view of the observed relationships across our database. In contrast to the IIASA metric, the adjusted metrics explained some variation in normalized productivity in the database (R2 = 0.03–0.21; depending on the applied method). A test for five manually selected local fertility gradients in our database revealed a significant and stronger relationship between the adjusted metrics and productivity for each of the gradients (R2 = 0.09–0.38). This study thus shows for the first time how nutrient availability metrics can be evaluated and adjusted for a particular ecosystem type, using a large-scale database.

The role of cultural heritage in attracting skilled individuals

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by built heritages and cultural environments, alongside other locational factors, in explaining the growth of human capital in Sweden. We distinguish between urban, natural and cultural qualities as different sources of regional attractiveness and estimate their influence on the observed growth of individuals with at least three years of higher education during 2001–2010. Neighborhood-level data are used, and unobserved heterogeneity and spatial dependencies are modeled by employing random effects estimations and an instrumental variable approach. Our findings indicate that the local supply of built heritages and cultural environments explain a significant part of human capital growth in Sweden. Results suggest that these types of cultural heritages are important place-based resources with a potential to contribute to improved regional attractiveness and growth.

Electricity generation in Nigeria from municipal solid waste using the Swedish Wasteto-Energy Model

Waste-to-energy (WTE) technology in Nigeria is still at the infancy stage whereas in Sweden the technology is now so advanced that energy in the form of heat and electricity has commercially been recovered from waste. This study examines waste-toenergy development and its success factors in Sweden with a view to instigating the deployment of a modified Sweden’s waste-to-energy model in Nigeria to enhance her WTE capacity. The study was carried out in two phases. The first phase involved field visits to some waste-to-energy plants in Sweden and the second phase was a desk research of available data on current WTE development in Nigeria, Sweden’s energy sector as well as factors responsible for its successful WTE development. The result from the study showed that Sweden generated about 2.0TWh of electricity from about 5.7 million tonnes of waste in its WTE plants in 2014. The success of WTE development and growth in Sweden is hugely as a result of the support from the Swedish government via enacting enabling policies and adequate funding. With about 14 million tonnes of combustible waste available in Nigeria, about 4.4TWh of electricity could be generated annually if WTE development in the country receives similar support from the Nigerian government. Keywords: Electricity generation, Municipal solid waste, Renewable energy, Solid waste combustion, Swedish waste-to-energy model, Waste-to-energy development

Locomotives of local growth: The short- and long-term impact of railroads in Sweden

This paper studies the impact of railroads on 150years of urban growth in Sweden, identifying the short- and long-term effects of a first wave of railroad construction. Difference-in-differences and instrumental variable estimates show that towns that gained access experienced substantial relative increases in population, though such growth mainly reflected a relocation of economic activity. Over the twentieth century, we find little evidence of convergence in town populations, despite the railroad network expanding further to connect nearly all towns. Evidence on historical investments and present-day factors is consistent with the idea that the transitory shock of the first railroads gave rise to path dependence in the location of economic activity.

Economic growth and the transition from traditional to modern energy in Sweden

We examine the role of substitution from traditional to modern energy carriers and of differential rates of innovation in the use of each of these in economic growth in Sweden from 1850 to 1950. We use a simple growth model with a nested CES production function and exogenous factor-augmenting technological change and carry out a counterfactual simulation based on the econometric results. Even though the rate of technical change was higher for modern energy, innovation in the use of traditional energy carriers contributed more to growth between 1850 and 1890, since the cost share of traditional energy was so much larger than that of modern energy in that period. However, after 1890 we find that modern energy contributed much more to economic growth than traditional energy, but, increasingly, labor-augmenting technological change became the most important single driver of growth.

Labour Market Externalities and Regional Growth in Sweden: The Importance of Labour Mobility between Skill-Related Industries

Boschma R., Eriksson R. H. and Lindgren U. Labour market externalities and regional growth in Sweden: the importance of labour mobility between skill-related industries, Regional Studies. This study investigates the relationship between labour market externalities and regional growth based on real labour flows. In particular, it tests for the importance of labour mobility across so-called skill-related industries between 435 four-digit industries within 72 Swedish functional regions (1998–2002). Both the fixed-effect models and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimates demonstrate that a strong intensity of intra-regional labour flows between skill-related industries impacts positively on regional productivity growth, but less so on employment growth. Labour mobility between unrelated industries tends to dampen regional unemployment growth while a high degree of intra-industry labour flows is only found to be associated with rising unemployment.

Firm size and growth in Sweden's life insurance market between 1855 and 1947: A test of Gibrat's law

Using data for the period from 1855 to 1947 and the two sub-periods, 1855–1902 and 1903–47, the article examines whether the organic growth rates of 38 Swedish life insurance firms are independent of size, as predicted by Gibrat's (1931) Law of Proportionate Effects. Using panel unit root tests and panel Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) regression, the article finds a significant difference between the growth rates of small and large Swedish life insurance firms (with smaller firms tending to grow faster than larger firms), a result that clearly contradicts Gibrat's Law as a long-run tendency in the Swedish life insurance sector. significant influences were also found on firm growth from profitability, organisational form, reinsurance, the real rate of interest and the Swedish regulatory environment.