Entry into Swedish Retail and Wholesale Trade Markets

This paper examines, using a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model, what determined entry into the Swedish retail and wholesale trade markets between 1990 and 1996. According to the results, high returns on equity and low sunk costs seemed to attract more entry into retail trade industries, while recent entry and higher total industry sales were associated with more entry into both retail and wholesale trade local markets.     

Firm growth in the Swedish retail and wholesale industries

To identify the determinants of firm growth in the Swedish retail and wholesale industries during 2000–2004, we analyse a sample of 400 limited liability companies using quantile regression techniques. Firm growth was mainly found to depend upon time-invariant firm-specific effects, supporting Penrose's [1959 Penrose, E. 1959. The theory of the growth of the firm, 4, New York: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]. The theory of the growth of the firm (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press] suggestion that internal resources such as firm culture, brand loyalty, entrepreneurial skills, and so on are important determinants of firm growth.     

The Economic Contribution of High-Growth Firms: Do Policy Implications Depend on the Choice of Growth Indicator?

Prior studies have defined high-growth firms (HGFs) in terms of growth in firm employment or firm sales, and primarily analyzed their contribution to overall employment growth. In this paper we define HGFs using the commonly applied growth indicators (employment and sales), but also add definitions based on growth in value added and productivity. Our results indicate that HGFs in terms of employment are not the same firms as HGFs in terms of productivity, and that their economic contributions differ significantly. Economic policy promoting fast growth in employment may therefore come at the cost of reduced productivity growth. Although HGFs of different definitions may not be the same firms, young firms are more likely to be HGFs irrespective of definition. This suggests that economic policy should focus on the conditions for new firm formation and early growth of firms, rather than target a particular type of HGFs.     

Opening Local Retail Food Stores: A Real-Options Approach

A real-options approach was used, incorporating uncertainty and irreversibility of investments, to study the number of stores entering the Swedish retail food market during the period 1994–2002. It was found that uncertainty affected the entry-decision. Entry was less frequent in highly concentrated local retail food-markets characterized by a high degree of uncertainty, whereas higher profit opportunities seem to have increased the probability of entry.     

Tax-Induced Trading and the Identity of the Marginal Investor: Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

Changes in the Swedish tax code during the 1990s were structured in a way that offers an opportunity to test whether ex-dividend prices were determined by the taxation of domestic individual investors. The results presented in this paper indicate that ex-dividend prices were not influenced by the relatively large tax changes for domestic individual investors. In addition, there was no evidence that the taxation of domestic individual investors influenced ex-dividend prices for any specific dividend yield group.     

Why Do Politicians Implement Central Bank Independence Reforms?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why politicians around the world have chosen to give up power to independent central banks, thereby reducing their ability to fine-tune the economy. A new data-set covering 132 countries, of which 86 countries had implemented such reforms, was collected. Politicians in non-OECD countries were more likely to delegate power to independent central banks if their country has been characterized by a high variability in historical inflation and if they faced a high probability of being replaced. No such effects were found for OECD countries.     

Does Gibrat's law hold for retailing? Evidence from Sweden

Gibrat's Law predicts that firm growth is a purely random effect and therefore should be independent of firm size. The purpose of this paper is to test Gibrat's law within the retail industry, using a novel data-set comprising all surviving Swedish limited liability companies active at some point between 1998 and 2004. Very few studies have previously investigated whether Gibrat's Law seems to hold for retailing, and they are based on highly aggregated data. Our results indicate that Gibrat's Law can be rejected for a large majority of five-digit retail industries in Sweden, since small retail firms tend to grow faster than large ones.     

When is Gibrat’s law a law?

The purpose of this article is to investigate if the industry context matters for whether Gibrat’s law is rejected or not using a dataset that consists of all limited firms in five-digit NACE-industries in Sweden during 1998–2004. The results reject Gibrat’s law on an aggregate level, since small firms grow faster than large firms. However, Gibrat’s law is confirmed about as often as it is rejected when industry-specific regressions are estimated. It is also found that the industry context—e.g., minimum efficient scale, market concentration rate, and number of young firms in the industry—matters for whether Gibrat’s law is rejected or not.     

The efficacy and cost of regime shifts in inflation policies-Evidence from New Zealand and Sweden

In this paper a comparative study of the regime shift in inflation policies in New Zealand and Sweden is performed. A nonparametric regression method is used to decompose the inflation time series into three components of variation: a long-term trend, a medium-term (cyclical and transient variations) trend and a short-term shocks component. This allows study of the transition process from the high inflation characterizing the end of the 1970s and the 1980s to the low inflation observed during the 1990s. It is found that in New Zealand, although it is initially delayed, the decrease in inflation happens at a faster pace than in Sweden. This may indicate that reforms were more efficient in New Zealand. A clear link is also shown between the rising unemployment and the transition from high to low inflation. Furthermore, while in New Zealand a downward adjustment of the unemployment rate happens directly after the transition period, in Sweden there seems to be persistence in high unemployment.