Swedish Geopolitics: From Rudolf Kjellén to a Swedish ‘Dual State’

Early in the twentieth century, Swedish geopolitical scholar Rudolf Kjellén wrote of the nineteenth century nation-state as a state of ‘land and people’, but he also suggested that in the twentieth century various empires would eventually force Central Europe to unify into a bloc of states under the protection of a powerful Germany. This concept of ‘state-bloc’ resembles Carl Schmitt’s idea of Grossraum and is also very similar to what later became NATO, but now with the United States, not Germany, as its central protecting power. Within the individual state, this duality of nation-state and state-bloc was fused with what Hans Morgenthau called a ‘dual state’ with a regular state hierarchy of the nation-state versus a parallel security hierarchy, now linked to the central power. After the Second World War, Sweden, despite its ‘policy of neutrality’, was placed under the US nuclear umbrella, creating a duality that typified Morgenthau’s idea of the ‘dual state’. The regular ‘democratic hierarchy’ was confronted by the US-leaning ‘security hierarchy’, with the latter intervening in the event of emergency. In the 1980s, the strength and unpredictability of the Swedish Social Democratic government became worrisome to the US security network. In a crisis situation, the ‘dual state’ – or what we might call a ‘double sovereignty’ of the ‘democratic state’ and the ‘security state’ – might prove unacceptable. In the final analysis, the Schmittian ‘sovereign’ is undivided.     

What Matters in Venture Capital? Evidence from Entrepreneurs’ Stated Preferences

We study how entrepreneurs evaluate the ability of different US venture capitalists (VCs) to add value to start-up companies. Analyzing a large data set of entrepreneurs’ stated preferences regarding VCs, we demonstrate that entrepreneurs view independent partnership VCs more favorably than other VC types (e.g., corporate, financial, and government sponsored VCs). Although entrepreneurs are able to correctly identify VCs with better track records, they do not believe them to be more desirable investors. We also find that an entrepreneur's rankings are affected by their overall exposure to VCs, emphasizing the role of experiential learning in the venture capital market.     

Production risk in multi-output industries: estimates from Norwegian dairy farms

Farmers who produce multiple outputs are portfolio managers in the sense that they use inputs to balance expected economic return and variance of return. This article estimates the structure of the stochastic multioutput production technology in Norwegian dairy farming, allowing for a more flexible specification of the technology than previous studies. We find that an increase in input levels leads primarily to higher output variability, and that inputs also influence the covariance of shocks between outputs. Risk reducing effects of inputs on outputs are primarily present in the covariance functions. Technical change leads to shifts in the profit distribution over the data period, but no welfare improvement for risk averse farmers.     

Structural Change, Competition, and Job Turnover in Swedish Manufacturing, 1964–96

The rate of interindustry job turnover in Swedish manufacturing seems to be driven by the dispersion of profit changes among industries. Shifts in international competitiveness among industries played a central role for explaining this pattern. The rate of intraindustry job turnover among plants has been higher in industries with many small plants, low profit margins, and high import penetration.     

Risk and risk management in organic and conventional cash crop farming in Norway

This study presents empirical insight into organic and conventional cash crop farmers' perceptions of risk and risk management strategies, and identifies socio-economic variables linked to these perceptions. The data originate from a questionnaire survey of farmers in Norway. The results indicate that organic farmers perceived themselves to be less risk averse than conventional farmers. For both groups, crop prices and yield variability were the two top rated sources of risk, followed by institutional risks. The two groups evaluated risk management strategies quite similarly; favoured strategies were good liquidity and to prevent and reduce crop diseases and pests. The farmers' evaluation of sources of risk and choice of risk strategies depended on various socio-economic variables. The importance of institutional risks implies that policy makers should be cautious about changing policy capriciously and they should consider strategic policy initiatives that give farmers more long-term reliability.     

CEO compensation in venture-backed firms

We hypothesize that because fast-growing young companies must raise money in private capital markets that contain significant financing frictions, the CEOs of such firms will be compensated for successful fundraising. Using a sample of 1585 private venture-backed U.S. firms, we find that the cash pay of entrepreneur-CEOs is increasing in both the quantity and quality of financing secured and is more sensitive to successful fundraising the more challenging and difficult is the fundraising task. Successful fundraising also increases the gap between the pay of CEOs and other executives. Finally, we show that while VC financing dilutes the CEO's fractional equity ownership, it increases the dollar value of that ownership.     

Investor abilities and financial contracting: Evidence from venture capital

Using a large, new database of contractual provisions governing the allocation of cash flow rights in venture capital (VC) financings, we investigate how contract design is related to VC abilities to monitor and provide value-added services to the entrepreneur. We find that more experienced VCs, who have superior abilities and more frequently join the boards of their portfolio companies, obtain weaker downside-protecting contractual cash flow rights than less experienced VCs. Several pieces of evidence suggest that this relation is unlikely to be driven by selection effects. The results suggest that VCs with better governance abilities focus less on obtaining downside protections, which entail risk-sharing costs, and more on other aspects of the contract (such as obtaining board representation) during negotiations with entrepreneurs. The results also imply that previous estimates of the amount entrepreneurs pay for affiliation with high-quality VCs are overstated.     

Translating socially responsible workforce reduction—A longitudinal study of workforce reduction in a Swedish company

This article seeks to add to our understanding of the significance and impact of processes of translation in the context of socially responsible workforce reduction. Abandoning the tendency among researchers and policy-makers to regard socially responsible workforce reduction as a stable feature or model that can be passed on and implemented in any organisation regardless of the local context, it will be claimed here that any attempt to understand what socially responsible workforce reduction means in practice must take account of the context in which it occurs and the processes whereby new ideas are imitated and translated by local actors. This claim will be supported by field data from a large Swedish company that has been undergoing extensive restructuring since the beginning of the 1990s. The implications of the article highlight the need for researchers to take account of the way workforce reduction practices are connected over time and to consider the space for translation available to local actors when it comes to defining the meaning of socially responsible workforce reduction in their own local context. The paper also contributes to our understanding of the interrelationship between the translation of such ideas and the processes of institutionalisation.     

Financial Contracts in PIPE Offerings: The Role of Expert Placement Agents

We examine how Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) contracts allocate contingent cash flow rights between investors and issuers and the role of placement agents in PIPE contract design. Issuers advised by expert agents agree to more investor‐friendly terms than issuers advised by nonexpert agents. Expert agents appear to help issuers understand the payoff consequences of negotiable terms. Moreover, expert agents allow issuers to negotiate more attractive pricing when they agree to investor‐friendly terms. Issuers earn higher postoffering stock returns when they use expert agents or agree to more investor‐friendly terms. These results suggest that the involvement of expert agents is beneficial to PIPE issuers.