The decline and fall of an industry

Abstract

Economic history abounds in research concerned with the growth of flourishing trades and with the factors causing their rise or prosperity. Declining trades and dying occupations have not received the same attention. Trades which are declining are, however, just as important as those which are prospering for the understanding of the processes of economic development.     

The Disciplinary Effect of the Single Market on Swedish Firms

In the 1980s it became increasingly clear that the European Community market was still segmented by national borders because of non-tariff barriers to trade. A major objective of the Single Market Program in 1992 was to remove these barriers, thereby enforcing intra-union competition. In this paper, a panel of Swedish firm-level data is used to evaluate whether domestic market power has been curtailed as a consequence of the SMP and of the Swedish membership in the European Union in 1995. Evidence of increased competition emerges, as price-cost margins have declined in industries with high non-tariff barriers prior to 1992. JEL Classification Numbers: F15, L11, C33     

An Empirical Assessment of the Swedish Bullionist Controversy*

In the 18th century, a fierce political debate broke out in Sweden about the causes of an extraordinary depreciation of the currency. More specifically, the deteriorating value of the Swedish currency was blamed arbitrarily on monetary causes (e.g., the overissuing of banknotes) and on non-monetary causes (such as balance-of-payments deficits). This paper provides a comprehensive empirical assessment of this so-called “Swedish Bullionist Controversy”. The results of vector autoregressions suggest that increasing amounts of paper money did give rise to inflation and a depreciation of the exchange rate. Conversely, non-monetary factors were probably less important for these developments.     

Explaining municipal audit costs in Sweden: Reconsidering the political environment,the municipal organisation and the audit market

With the purpose of explaining professional audit costs in Swedish municipalities, we hypothesised that audit costs are partly driven by various signalling and monitoring incentives in order to manage stakeholder relationships. Our model of the determinants of audit costs was tested on data from Swedish municipalities, thus extending the study of audit costs to political organisations in a Scandinavian institutional context. The test supported to some extent the traditional propositions of organisational complexity, risk and market determinants, as well as the proposition of the political environment. Our results indicate that audit costs are used to signal accountability, thereby suggesting that audit as a signal could be managed without managing professional auditors.     

瑞典第一大能源--生物质能发展概况及其启示

瑞典生物质能发展处于世界领先水平,2009年起,生物质能已替代石油成为瑞典第一大能源,促进了瑞典经济的绿色发展。2012年,瑞典生物质能达到能源消耗总量的31.6%。通过介绍瑞典生物质能的概况及瑞典政府发展生物质能的主要政策措施,从而提出对我国发展生物质能、转变能源发展方式、建设生态文明的几点启示。     

瑞典国家创新体系探析与启示

创新能力反映一国的综合国力和核心竞争力,瑞典的全球创新指数和竞争力排名世界领先,主要原因是有运行有效的国家创新体系．它的主要特点是以绿色创新为战略导向,以服务创新为战略动向。瑞典政府积极完善创新战略,营造良好的创新环境,形成多方利益联盟,建立多渠道的成果转化机制,使得创新体系中四类要素（政府、大学、研发服务机构以及企业、集群）之间形成了复杂而有效的有机整体。与瑞典国家创新体系相比．中国的国家创新体系还需进一步完善。     

Reduced opportunities for regional renewal: The role of rigid threat responses among a region's established firms

This article illustrates how opportunities for regional renewal in a peripheral region may be reduced by rigid threat responses undertaken by established firms operating within traditional regional industry. In an inductive case study of new biorefinery industry initiatives in a region where traditional pulp-and-paper and forestry industry was in decline, we used primary and secondary data to outline how a set of new industry players who created innovative ways of using existing regional infrastructures and resources sparked rigid threat responses among established firms from the struggling traditional industry. Established industry firms framed new industry initiatives as threats, and responded by (1) reducing new industry actors’ possibilities for new business development, (2) engaging in entrenched resistance, (3) creating collaborative illusions and (4) undermining the fundamentals of the new industry. Consequently, this study contributes to existing literature by proposing the potential of applying the threat-rigidity thesis on a regional level. This is achieved by illustrating that conflicting behaviours between new and established regional industry actors constrain opportunities for regional renewal in a peripheral region. As such, relevant directions for future research and policy implications are outlined.     

The virtual is reality! On physical and virtual space in software firms’ knowledge formation

ABSTRACT

To understand how knowledge is created and exchanged, it is necessary to unwrap the role played by the physical and virtual spaces. The extant research offers interesting findings when it comes to the relationships among regional, institutional and organizational characteristics, innovation and firms’ abilities to link up to global knowledge sources. A focus on the role of informal and low-cost mechanisms, both regional and global, has extended our understanding of their role in knowledge formation. However, the physical space has dominated this literature to the detriment of the virtual space. The inclusion of the virtual space, both as an interaction space and as a different and complementary dimension, makes it possible to gain new insights into knowledge formation in a digitalizing world. Based on in-depth interviews with small- and medium-sized software companies in two urban agglomerations in Norway and Sweden, this paper explores the use of physical and virtual spaces. The findings show that these spaces interact and mutually influence each other. The world is not ‘flattening’ due to ongoing digitalization; moreover, urban agglomerations are still important places in which these spaces are optimized and unified.