The development of the management accountant's role revisited: An example from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency

This study traces the development of the management accountant (MA) role at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SIA). In 2012, the agency began a reformation by implementing the Lean management system in hopes of increasing customer trust. The results of this study show that the authority of the MA rests on decentralization and the proximity of MAs to managers, as previous research has shown, and more specifically on a definitional and a moral prerogative that may or may not be awarded to MAs enabling them to act as de facto managers. The study shows how the role of the SIA's operative level MAs changed into a helpdesk function with the role of assisting other groups to help themselves, in this case operative‐level teams that had begun performing management accounting tasks. Thus, this study bears witness not to the expansion and hybridization of existing MA roles, but to the reduction in authority and de‐hybridization of the MA role, from business partner to a pedagogical role on a consultative basis.     

Liquidity and CDS premiums on European companies around the Subprime crisis

This paper sheds new light on the liquidity dynamics of the credit default swaps (CDS) market in Europe around the Subprime crisis. Based on an original dataset of 94 European companies from 2005 to 2009, we use a panel regression analysis to study the relationship between CDS premiums and liquidity. We measure the level of liquidity, look at liquidity risk, and study the liquidity spillovers from the bond and equity markets to the CDS market. We show that the effect of liquidity on CDS premiums is dominated by the influence of worsening credit conditions and deteriorating investors?? expectations about default risk. Controlling for credit risk, we also find that liquidity risk is priced in the European CDS market and that liquidity spillovers from the bond market matter in determining CDS premiums.     

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve and staggered price and wage determination in a model with firm-specific labor

We develop a DSGE model with firm-specific labor where wage and price setting are subject to Calvo-type staggering. This is in general an intractable problem due to complicated intertemporal dependencies between price and wage decisions. However, the problem is significantly simplified if we, in line with empirical evidence, assume that prices can be changed whenever wages are. We show that the price- and wage-setting relationships are substantially altered by the introduction of firm-specific labor. Specifically, the inflation response is substantially dampened, whereas the wage inflation response is increased as compared to models with freely mobile labor. These distinctive features of the model with firm-specific labor are supported by empirical evidence from a structural VAR.     

Do Surveillance Cameras Affect Unruly Behavior? A Close Look at Grandstands

How do surveillance cameras affect unruly spectator behavior? I examine this question using a natural experiment from the Swedish soccer league. Stadiums in Sweden introduced surveillance cameras at different points in time during the years 2000 and 2001. I exploit the exogenous variation that occurred because of differences across stadiums in the processing time taken to obtain permits for cameras as well as delays in the supply of equipment. Conditioning on stadium fixed effects, unruly behavior was found to be approximately 65 percent lower in stadiums with cameras compared to stadiums without cameras. The identification strategy provides a unique possibility to address problems regarding endogeneity, simultaneous policy interventions, and displacement effects.     

«Flexiseguridad» en Bélgica. Una propuesta de reforma basada en principios económicos

El régimen de seguro de desempleo y la legislación protectora del empleo de Bélgica se establecieron con el telón de fondo de una relación clásica, de carácter estable y duradero, entre trabajadores y empresas. Sin embargo, la globalización de la economía y la rápida evolución de las tecnologías y los sistemas de organización exigen hoy en día más flexibilidad tanto a unos como a otras. De ahí que las instituciones del mercado laboral hayan de reformarse de manera urgente para conciliar esta mayor flexibilidad con una seguridad suficiente para los trabajadores. Aunque la idea de la «flexiseguridad» no es nueva, hay opiniones distintas sobre cuál es el modelo institucional que debe traer consigo. Los autores proponen una reforma guiada expresamente por los principios económicos.     

Personal Taxation and Investment Incentives in a Small Open Economy

A simple portfolio model is used to investigate the effects of personal taxes on real investment incentives in a small open economy with large and small firms. When shares in large firms can be traded internationally and their rate of return is exogenously determined on international equity markets, a tax on the return on riskless bonds will induce a portfolio shift from bonds to shares in large firms. This shift reduces the impact of the bond tax on the required rate of return on shares in domestically owned small firms, provided that returns on shares in small and large firms are positively correlated. The total impact of the bond tax may even change from a negative to a counter-intuitive positive one if the “beta” between the returns on small and large firms is above unity. A personal tax on equity returns does in general have an ambiguous impact on the pre-tax rate of return requirement of domestically owned firms. An exogenous rate of return on large company shares is shown to enhance the possibility for the equity tax to reduce the required pre-tax rate of return in small domestic firms. A sufficient condition for a negative relationship is again that the “beta” between the returns in small and large firms is above unity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The effect of police intelligence on group violence: Evidence from reassignments in Sweden

This paper isolates the causal effect of policing on group violence, using unique panel data on self-reported crime by soccer and ice hockey hooligans. The problem of reverse causality from violence to policing is solved by two drastic reallocations of the Stockholm Sport Intelligence and Tactical Unit to other activities following the 9/11 terrorist attack in September 2001 and the Tsunami catastrophe in December 2004. Difference-in-difference analysis reveals that Stockholm-related hooligan violence increased dramatically during these periods.     

Boundary conditions for the sustainable use of major fish stocks in the Baltic Sea

The history of the management of Baltic fishery resources suggests that both biological and non-biological factors influence management decisions and that both types of information are essential for management which promotes sustainability. There is a direct link between the exploitation level and the risks for fishing as an economic activity due to fluctuations in the resource. This paper analyses the sustainability of the present catch levels of major Baltic fish stocks. By examining the rate of fishing mortality and recruitment variability, the possibility of sustaining present catch levels can be investigated. Current catch levels of Baltic cod and some salmon stocks are not sustainable whereas sprat and herring catches are. High rates of fishing mortality of cod and salmon may endanger stocks if a drop in the recruitment causes an increase of the fishing mortality rates in order to sustain short-term catches. By analysing the trade off between exploitation level and risk of stock decline, managers can obtain a basis for quota negotiations.     

Extensions and intensions of management control—The inclusion of health

Interest in management control of intangibles has grown remarkably during the last decades and now includes managing employee health. Research in this field is so far in the early stages: few empirical studies have been undertaken and fewer studies take into consideration the implications of such systems. In this paper we wish to contribute to the field with a qualitative study of instances of management control of health in ten Swedish organizations.Many good intentions lie behind the idea of making health and ill-health a subject for management control and the expected results are very positive—lower sick-leave rates, reduction of costs and human suffering. Such intentions stand for an intension, i.e. the ideas, properties or state of affairs that are connoted by a word or symbol, in this case what can be connoted by the concept of management control of health, its conceptual position. An intension, however, is not given insofar as a word or concept may be associated to more than one. Thus we set out to interpret management control of health in terms of two conceptual positions, modernism and postmodernism, in order to bring forth two very different intensions of management control of health: one where the practice is seen as an investment with a purpose to visualize ill-health and increase efficiency by putting in place measures to increase employee health; the other where the practice is seen as a means to make the individual accountable in order to be able to intensify control and colonize leisure.