The purpose of this paper is to investigate why politicians around the world have chosen to give up power to independent central banks, thereby reducing their ability to fine-tune the economy. A new data-set covering 132 countries, of which 86 countries had implemented such reforms, was...

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...

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...

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish between the determinants of new start-ups and in migration of firms using a data-set that covers 13,471 limited liability firms in the Swedish wholesale trade industries during the period 2000- 2004. Our results indicate that the presence of a...

Did the introduction of congestion charges in Stockholm city reduce retail revenues? Data from 20 shopping malls - 8 within the toll area, and 12 outside the tool area - and from a sample of retail stores located along the main shopping streets was analyzed using an intervention-control...

Empirical studies demonstrate that most net job-growth originates from a small number of high-growth firms (HGFs). The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether firm ownership – family, or private non-family – matters for being a HGF, using data covering all firms in Sweden during...

The effect of Swedish regional investment grants during 1990-1999 on firm performance, in terms of returns on equity and number of employees, were studied using a propensity-score matching-method to control for sample selection. Firms that received grants did not perform better in terms of...

Gibrat’s Law predicts that firm growth is a purely random effect and therefore should be independent of firm size. The purpose of this paper is to test Gibrat’s law within the retail industry, using a novel data-set comprising all Swedish limited liability companies active at some point...