Restructuring the public sector: examples from the Swedish School Administration Board

This research note begins with a discussion of recent changes in the Swedish labour market, with special reference to employment changes in the public sector from a gender perspective. These changes are illustrated with a discussion of results from a study of the closing of the National Board of School Administration, an agency with a high proportion of women on its staff. Changes are compared to observations made during the restructuring of the industrial sector. The research note concludes with a short discussion on employment trends for the future, with special reference to the importance of the public sector.     

Experienced technology teachers’ teaching practices

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Teachers’ teaching practice plays a key role in the learning process of pupils, and for teaching to be successful, teachers must...     

The endogeneity of the natural rate of growth – an empirical study for Latin‐American countries

The aim of this paper is to analyse the sensitivity of the natural rate of growth to the actual rate of growth for a sample of 11 Latin‐American countries, assuming the natural rate to be determined endogenously by changes in the actual rate of growth. The natural rates of growth are estimated in a system of SUR estimations over the period 1986–2003. In order to determine whether they react endogenously to changes in the actual rate of growth, a dummy variable for boom periods is added to the system of regressions. The results confirm the hypothesis about the endogeneity of the natural rate of growth.     

College Choice and Subsequent Earnings: Results Using Swedish Sibling Data*

Using data on 19,000 whole siblings, it is shown that earnings vary significantly among students who have graduated from different colleges. The cross‐section estimates are up to twice the within‐family estimates, indicating that a regression estimator of college effects that does not adjust properly for family characteristics will overestimate the earnings premium of college. This study also shows that the effects of college choice vary between sisters and brothers and that there is a relationship between teacher quality and the college effects. These findings suggest that there is no straightforward interpretation of college in individual earnings equations.     

Heterogeneous beliefs and the effect of replicatable options on asset prices

We present two ways in which trading in a replicatable optioncan affect the price process of the underlying asset. In thefirst situation, trading an option that each investor viewsas pay off redundant breaks a non-fully revealing equilibriumthat exists when the option market is absent. The second situationinvolves a market that is dynamically complete without options,but in which introducing an option market allows self-confirmingconjectures of additional uncertainty about the future priceof the underlying asset. Heterogeneous beliefs play importantthough different roles in both situations.     

Land use in a circular city

This paper is concerned with optimal allocation of urban land to transportation. It attempts to extend the work of Solow and Vickrey, who posed this problem in an operationally one-dimensional long narrow city, to a two-dimensional circular city with a network of radial and circumferential roads. An interesting new problem arises, namely that travelers now have a choice of routes. Rules for optimal resource allocation are developed and analyzed. Assuming travel costs to be a strictly convex function of traffic density, it is shown that there is no travel through the center of an optimal city.