Many countries have undertaken central-bank independence reforms, but the years of implementation differ. What explains such differences in timing? This is of interest more broadly, as it sheds light on factors that matter for the speed at which economic reforms come about. We study a rich set...

IKEA is one of the world’s largest retailers, but little is known about how IKEA impact incumbent retailers when deciding to enter a local market. Previous studies on the effects of big-box entry on surrounding retailers have also generated inconclusive results, and mainly been focused towards...

Central banks have been made more independent in many countries. A common rationale has been the existence of a credibility (or lack-of-trust) problem for monetary policy. This indicates a possible and until now unexplored link between social trust and central-bank independence. Our empirical...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether increasing gender diversity on the board of directors improves firm perfomance, using a data-set of 20,487 limited companies in Sweden during 1997-2005. We use a random-effects random-coefficients model to account for unobserved firm...

A natural experiment is used to identify the causal relationship between employment protection legislation and firm growth. The natural experiment occurred in Sweden in 2001, when an exemption made it possible for firms with less than eleven employees to exclude two workers from the...

It is frequently argued that policymakers should target high-tech firms, i.e., firms with high R&D intensity, because such firms are considered more innovative and therefore potential fast-growers. This argument relies on the assumption that the association among high-tech status, innovativeness...

Using data from 2000-2011, the effects of a new IKEA store on retail revenues, employment, and inflow of purchasing power in the entry municipalities, as well as in neighboring municipalities were investigated. A propensity score matching method was used to find non IKEA entry municipalities...

A real-options approach was used, incorporating uncertainty and irreversibility of investments, to study the number of stores entering the Swedish retail food market during the period 1994-2002. It was found that uncertainty affected the entry-decision. Entry was less frequent in highly...

The purpose of this paper is to study, using a comprehensive Swedish panel data set, whether investors are less willing to realize capital gains when the marginal tax rate on capital gains is relatively high. In Sweden capital gains are taxed independently of ordinary income at a flat rate,...

It is something of a puzzle that politicians around the world have chosen to give up power to independent central banks, thereby reducing their possibilities to fine-tune the economy. In this paper the determinants of central bank independence (CBI) reforms are studied using a new data set on...