The rise and decline of industrial foundations as controlling owners of Swedish listed firms: the role of tax incentives

ABSTRACT

Beginning in the interwar period, industrial foundations became a vehicle for corporate control of large listed firms in Sweden. In the 1990s they were replaced by wealthy individuals who either directly own controlling blocks or who own them through holding companies. We study potential explanations for this change and propose two tax-related candidates: shifts in the relative effective taxation across owner types and the dismantling of inheritance taxation that prevented the generational transfer of the ownership of large controlling blocks. We exploit newly computed marginal effective capital income tax rates across capital owners, accounting for all relevant factors, including rules governing tax exemptions. We show that the 1990–91 tax reform, abolition of the wealth tax for controlling owners in 1997, 2003 tax exemption of dividends and capital gains on listed stock for holding companies with a voting or equity share of at least 10 percent, and abolition of the inheritance and gift taxes in 2004 reversed the rules of the game. Recently, control has largely been wielded through direct ownership, and the role of foundations is rapidly declining. These findings point to the importance of tax incentives for the use of foundations as the control vehicle of listed firms.     

The economics of the Swedish online gambling market

In this article, we study how the Swedish online gambling market has developed and how the availability of foreign-based online gambling has affected the domestic state-owned gambling monopoly, AB Svenska Spel. We find that online gambling and the traditional state-managed gambling are relatively weak substitutes. Thus, concerns about the availability of online gambling being able to undercut domestic gambling policies may be overstated.     

Management control in public sector Joint Ventures

Cooperation among public sector organizations (PSOs) is increasingly important in the management of resources in welfare systems. A Joint Venture (JV) is an organization form that enables PSOs to cooperate with each other in order to achieve economies of scale. However, JVs contain interrelated horizontal and vertical control relationships (between the owners and between the owners and the JV Company) that complicate their control. The first aim of this paper is to map the dynamics in vertical and horizontal control packages in municipal JVs and to describe the relational factors that affect them. Based on three case studies we conclude that vertical control packages are affected by: goodwill trust and competence trust; parent differences in management style and size in combination with control competence; parent diversification (low relatedness between the JV's activity and the parents’ other activities); and the horizontal control package (e.g., rules for parent interaction and distribution of work). Horizontal control packages are affected by: goodwill trust, system trust and calculative trust; parent differences in size; and efforts to achieve equality. The second aim of the paper is to contribute to the discussion on the relationship between trust and control. We observed that trust is potentially unaffected by the introduction of formal controls. We also found that trust has an inverted “crowding out” effect on control. A high ambition to maintain trust leads to underdeveloped formal controls. In addition, we found that the ambition to preserve trust may inhibit the realisation of economies of scale.     

Trend model testing of growth convergence in 15 OECD countries, 1946-1997

A framework based on a linear deterministic trend function is introduced in order to model growth convergence. The approach is a practical solution to the nonlinearity and nonstationarity found in the convergence of output-per-capita gaps between the USA and 14 OECD countries in 1946–1997. Convergence is found to be a typical feature of European OECD countries and Japan, but for some major countries it altered since the beginning of 1980. Some evidence of divergence exists too. Valid statistical inference on trend-growth estimates is based on sample-size standardized t - and Wald-test statistics, since the model residuals are close to I(1). Small-sample test values are derived using bootstrap methods.     

Investment and Uncertainty: A Theory‐based Empirical Approach*

This paper provides empirical evidence on the dynamic effects of uncertainty on firm‐level capital accumulation. A novelty in this paper is that the firm‐level uncertainty indicator is motivated and derived from a theoretical model, the neoclassical investment model with time to build. This model also serves as the base for the empirical work, where an error‐correction approach is employed. I find a negative effect of uncertainty on capital accumulation, both in the short run and the long run. This outcome cannot be explained by the model alone. Instead, the results suggest that the predominant mechanism at work stems from irreversibility constraints.     

The Story-lines of Technological Change: Innovation, Construction and Appropriation

The paper contrasts three story-lines of technological change, which represent three different ways to think about technology as a social process. Each story-line, or discourse, or narrative strategy, has its own special terminology and is derived from particular academic fields and intellectual traditions. And each has different ways of considering the forms of social agency that are relevant in relation to technological change. For the story-line of innovation, the relevant agents are the producers of commercial products, often referred to as systems of innovation; for the story-line of construction, agency is conceptualized as those particular actors that have an interest in a particular artifact and its promulgation. For the story-line of appropriation, the social agency is differentiated into various user communities. When we analyze the relations between technology and society, it is important to know which kind of story we are telling and which story-line, or narrative strategy we are following.     

Inter‐Organizational Cooperation Challenging Hierarchical Accountability: The Dominated Actors in a Municipal Joint Venture

New public management offers a number of solutions to the kinds of problems that public sector organizations experience. In taking an accountability perspective, this paper elaborates on how two of these – strict responsibility for performance, and inter‐organizational cooperation – may conflict. The setting for this study is a joint venture with a dominant municipality and six dominated municipalities as owners. The article examines how horizontal accountability processes may influence the dominated owners’ hierarchical accountability. The ability to account hierarchically for the quality of service within budgetary parameters is problematized, when dominated owners may dismantle their ability to demand horizontal accountability.     

The Relevant Market for Production and Wholesale of Electricity in the Nordic Countries: An Econometric Study*

We apply cointegration analysis to daily averages of Nord Pool prices covering the period 2001–2007 in order to empirically characterize the geographical dimension of the relevant market for production and wholesale of electricity. We reach the following econometric conclusions: (i) price areas Finland, Sweden, and Norway 3 unambiguously belong to the same relevant market; (ii) Denmark 2 belongs to this same market except for the subsample 2004–2007; (iii) Norway 1 and Denmark 1 define separate markets on their own. We find that the stochastic trends in Nord Pool prices originate in countries abundant in capacity to generate hydro power.     

Conceptualizing dysfunctional consequences of performance measurement in the public sector

ABSTRACT

Performance measurement (PM) has become increasingly popular in the management of public sector organizations (PSOs). This is somewhat paradoxical considering that PM has been criticized for having dysfunctional consequences. Although there are reasons to believe that PM may have dysfunctional consequences, when they occur has not been clarified. The aim of this research is to conceptualize the dysfunctional consequences of PM in PSOs. Based on complementarity theory and contingency theory we conclude that dysfunctional consequences of PM are a matter of interactions between PM design and PM use, between control practices in the control system and between PM and context.