Second‐Generation Immigrants in the Swedish Labour Market

This study focuses on the labour market performance among second‐generation immigrants in Sweden. One motivation behind the analysis is that it gives insight into the long‐term consequences of immigration. Labour market performance relates the probability of having a job, referred to here as a threshold effect and to the differences in income from work, given that a person is in the market and is referred to as an income from work effect. We have shown that a clear threshold effect of being a second‐generation immigrant exists and that different groups of second‐generation immigrants perform differently in the Swedish labour market.     

The importance of the development banks for the financial infrastructure

In literature and practice the term “development bank” is commonly applied to investment banks for the financing of private projects which deserve to be promoted on general economic grounds. Their salient task is usually to provide medium- and long-term funds. Complementary consultative functions are occasionally performed as well while other bank transactions, especially of a short-term nature, and debit business were, as a rule, not considered. This concept of the purpose of a development bank has proved too narrow, too normative and too general.     

Within‐Subject Intra‐ and Inter‐Method Consistency of Two Experimental Risk Attitude Elicitation Methods

We compare the consistency of choices in two methods used to elicit risk preferences on an aggregate as well as on an individual level. We ask subjects to choose twice from a list of nine decisions between two lotteries, as introduced by Holt and Laury 2002, 2005 ) alternating with nine decisions using the budget approach introduced by Andreoni and Harbaugh ( 2009 ). We find that, while on an aggregate (subject pool) level the results are consistent, on an individual (within‐subject) level, behaviour is far from consistent. Within each method as well as across methods we observe low (simple and rank) correlations.     

Die Trianel Kavernenspeicheranlage in Epe: Ein flexibles Instrument für die Vollversorgung kommunaler Gasversorgungsunternehmen

Fast and flexible storage capacity will become more important in a liberalised gas market. For this reason Trianel, together with other partners, has decided to build a gas cavern facility in Epe. The typical operation of a gas cavern is peak-shaving. In contrast this article shows the economic possibilities of the cavern to establish a full swing supply.     

Vertical Integration and Efficiency: Ownership in the Swedish Sawmill Industry

This study investigates different types of vertically integrated ownership types inrelation to technical efficiency, in the Swedish sawmill industry. The theoreticalfindings connecting vertical integration and efficiency points in two directions:both in favour for non-integrated firms and in favour for fully integrated firms.In the study, significant differences between ownership types are not found. Onepossible interpretation of this result is that the integration advantages outweigh thepossible negative effects an integrated firms will have from maximising an integratedobjective function.     

Smallholders download and share videos from the Internet to learn about sustainable agriculture

Of 1,211 farmers and their representatives registered on www.accessagriculture.org, 142 participated in an on-line survey in November 2017, designed to learn farmer’s opinions of Access Agriculture, an NGO which hosts a digital platform where anyone can watch or download videos and other information for free. These farmer learning videos all convey practical information on sustainable agricultural innovations, to encourage farmer experiments. Previous experience showed that smallholders liked having their own copy of videos (e.g. on DVD), but this study showed that farmers are now starting to find their own way to the internet to pro-actively search for information. Although some farmers learn about on-line videos by social contacts, most of the farmers found the videos on www.accessagriculture.org by surfing the web. This suggests that limitations of reaching farmers with traditional forms of video distribution (e.g. DVDs and village screenings) will be partly overcome by the Internet. Youth have become the new information brokers for communities, as elders may lack the digital technology skills needed to use the Internet to get agricultural information. To share videos with other community members, youth will benefit from additional tools, such as an app, to allow easy download and sharing with limited data consumption.     

Do Vietnamese upland farmers benefit from high world market prices for maize?

For rural households in the north of Vietnam, maize cropping is the main source of income. In the face of the world market price increases of the recent past, we analyze the regional marketing chain of this commodity qualitatively and econometrically investigating to what extent smallholder farmers in developing countries are affected by international price movements. Vietnamese maize markets are found to be well integrated. Recent price hikes have fully transmitted along the regional supply chain so that farmers profited. Nevertheless, adverse factors such as increasing input prices have neutralized these benefits resulting in a decline in real income of smallholders.     

Accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts: An empirical comparison for the G7

In this paper, we use survey data to analyze the accuracy, unbiasedness and efficiency of professional macroeconomic forecasts. We analyze a large panel of individual forecasts that has not previously been analyzed in the literature. We provide evidence on the properties of forecasts for all G7-countries and for four different macroeconomic variables. Our results show a high degree of dispersion of forecast accuracy across forecasters. We also find that there are large differences in the performances of forecasters, not only across countries but also across different macroeconomic variables. In general, the forecasts tend to be biased in situations where the forecasters have to learn about large structural shocks or gradual changes in the trend of a variable. Furthermore, while a sizable fraction of forecasters seem to smooth their GDP forecasts significantly, this does not apply to forecasts made for other macroeconomic variables.