Den osynliga handen

Research into historic gardens has often emphasized the garden – the work of art – or else its creator or owner and his interests. Insofar as he has been mentioned, the gardener has often been viewed as an instrumental person giving effect to other people’s intentions. A garden, however, is an ongoing process and its form and content are created and re-created through the actions and decisions of various agents. The gardener’s knowledge, contacts and managerial acumen have a supremely palpable impact on the outcome. Despite the pivotal role of himself and his work in gardens throughout history, the gardener’s almost complete absence in research is notable. Knowledge born of experience, the work of hand and body, has somehow been taken for granted. This study is based on sources of many different kinds, such as gardening accounts, contracts of service, inventories, wage bills, estate inventories, correspondence, citizenship rolls, gardening manuals, horticultural journals and travelogues. In the absence of complete cradle-to-grave data for one individual, it has not been possible to make an individual case study of a particular gardener. Instead particulars of travel, workplaces, forms of tenure, tasks, name changes, godparents, succession, chattels etc. have been obtained from different documents about different gardeners in different places. The main emphasis of the study is on southern Sweden, without focusing on any particular geographic region. The thesis shows that a skilled master gardener, with his experiential knowledge, or ‘tacit knowledge’, was essential to the formal and substantial functioning of the garden during the 18th century. His role was that of caring for the garden and moving it forward, preserving and developing a concept, giving it a raison d’être and transforming it completely when called upon to do so. In addition, a gardener had to organize the work in the garden, teach garden boys and journeymen, run a business and keep the accounts, present the garden to visitors and sometimes develop new horticultural techniques. The study indirectly provides knowledge concerning the nature of garden design and the manner of its creation

Does School Competition Matter? Effects of a Large-Scale School Choice Reform on Student Performance

The effect of a general school choice reform on student performance is studied in a Swedish institutional setting. A rich set of individual level data allows estimation of a value added specification, mitigating problems with omission of relevant variables. Increased school competition is shown to have statistically significant positive effects on student performance in mathematics, but no significant effects in English and Swedish. Interacting school competition with student characteristics, the results indicate that immigrant students and those in need of special education tend to gain more from increased school competition than others, while adverse effects on students from low education families are found in terms of English and Swedish performance. However, quantile regressions indicate homogeneous effects on low and high performing students.Private school competition; school choice; student performance

City Retailers’ Perceptions of Competition: A Choice Experiment

The increase and expansion of out-of-town shopping centres is often criticized for out-competing retail business within city centres. City retailers’ own perceptions of competition within and between retail districts are here analyzed via choice experiments in the city of Gävle, Sweden. Choice experiments allow qualitative data to be transformed into quantitative data that can then be analyzed using statistical techniques. The results indicate that city retailers in general perceived a competitive threat within rather than between retail districts. Thus, city retailers do not seem to share policymakers’ concerns that out-of-town shopping centres out-compete retail business within city centres. This implies that city retailers either are naive, or that policy makers tend to overestimate the competitive threat, from out-of-town shopping centres.retail district; location; retail store; distance; experiential shopping

Income taxes and the probability to become self-employed: The case of Sweden

It is widely recognized that entrepreneurial activity plays an important role in promoting new product innovation, discovering new markets, and replacing inefficient incumbents in a process called “creative destruction”, all of which enhance economic growth. Given the importance of entrepreneurship and small business enterprises it is not surprising that policy makers worldwide (and especially in Europe) try to stimulate entrepreneurial activity. One public policy, frequently discussed, is how to design tax policies that stimulate start-ups and entrepreneurship. Existing knowledge about taxes’ effect on entrepreneurial activity and start-ups is relatively limited, however. Existing empirical studies are primarily based on US data and have until recently used aggregated tax measures (e.g., average national tax rates) or hypothetical marginal tax rates and time-series or cross-section data. This study, however, uses a particular rich longitudinal micro-level dataset based on Swedish tax-return information, which makes it possible to track a cohort of individuals over time periods during which tax rate changes took place, and thereby isolate whether real-life individual decisions about self-employment are affected by changes in the tax rates they actually face. In addition, as the tax structure in Sweden is neutral as opposed to the US that encourages risk taking and tax-driven self-employment, studying the effect of income taxes on the probability to become self-employed based on Swedish data provides information about how taxes on self-employment affect self-employment. Contrary to earlier studies based on US data, I find both average and marginal tax rates to negatively impact the probability to become self-employed.Self-employment; entrepreneurship; small business; taxation; wealth

Landscape change and its effects on the visual experience of a case study area in the Öresunds region

The study focuses on landscape change, from an historical perspective (year 1915) and as a discussion of future changes (year 2015) for a case study area in southern Sweden. The historical situation is based on map data while the situation of 2015 is a predictive modelling based on spatial planning and policy documents for the case study area. The study identifies changes in land cover and their spatial distribution within the landscape. The result is discussed in relation to perceived change as well as the areas sensitivity to change. The paper further outlines implications of the result for management and planning in the context of the European Landscape Convention.

17th Annual Institute for Law and Economic Policy Conference Access to Justice: April 7, 2011

There is a fragmented approach to social sustainability in the literature, and this paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the meanings and interpretations of that concept while reviewing and discussing the social dimension of sustainability from the perspectives of two fields: urban development as well as companies and products. The analysis identifies commonalities and differences in the understanding of the conceptualization of social sustainability and helps to identify core aspects that cross disciplinary boundaries. The paper shows that compiling a list of comprehensive aspects that is representative of social sustainability is not straightforward, as interpretations are context dependant and aspects are often closely interconnected. Differences often occur because of variations in scoping and context, or whether or not a life cycle perspective is used. Nonetheless, there seems to be an underlying common understanding of what social sustainability is, and a set of key themes (social capital, human capital and well-being) is suggested as an alternative to put more specific measures and indicators in perspective. However, context-specific information is still necessary in practical applications.QC 20140523. Updated from manuscript to article in journal.</p

Capturing TV user behaviour in fictional character descriptions

This work is part of the On-demand IPTV project, conducted by Acreo and SICS with financing from Vinnova and active support from an industrial consortium. The main goal of the project is to study the demands on cost-effective, scalable video-on-demand networks that can deliver video with high-quality with minor quality degradations in the transmission. An important issue in understanding this situation is to explore future user behaviour (and the resulting traffic patterns) when user can choose a mix of broadcast TV and a large number of on-demand channels and services. This paper reports on the first steps to develop an understanding of IPTV user behaviour by investigating the current situation using archetypical, fictional character descriptions often referred to as personas. This is an intermediate version; the final version will be the result of Task 4.1: User requirements analysis, part of WP 4: User needs and behaviour

The Aging Heart: Mitophagy at the Center of Rejuvenation.

Aging is associated with structural and functional changes in the heart and is a major risk factor in developing cardiovascular disease. Many recent studies have focused on increasing our understanding of the basis of aging at the cellular and molecular levels in various tissues, including the heart. It is known that there is an age-related decline in cellular quality control pathways such as autophagy and mitophagy, which leads to accumulation of potentially harmful cellular components in cardiac myocytes. There is evidence that diminished autophagy and mitophagy accelerate the aging process, while enhancement preserves cardiac homeostasis and extends life span. Here, we review the current knowledge of autophagy and mitophagy in aging and discuss how age-associated alterations in these processes contribute to cardiac aging and age-related cardiovascular diseases

Variations in Fertility - a Consequense of Other Factors Besides Love?

The purpose of this paper is to discuss possible explanations for the variation in the Swedish fertility rate. We are primarily interested in economic and social conditions and their impact on the total fertility rate between 1965 and 2003. The results from the study support a positive e¤ect on fertility from the female labour market participation and child allowance while divorces report a negative e¤ect on fertility. The model including level as well as di¤erences in the variables has been found to give the best results.Total fertility rate; Economics; Sweden; Time-series

Higher Education Levels, Firms' Outside Options and the Wage Structure

We analyze the consequences of an increase in the supply of highly educated workers on relative and real wages in a search model where wages are set by Nash-bargaining. The key insight is that an increase in the supply of highly educated workers improves the firms' outside option. As a consequence, the real wage of all workers decreases in the short-run. Since this decline is more pronounced for less educated workers, wage inequality increases. In the long-run a better educated work force induces firms to invest more in physical capital. Wage inequality and real wages of highly educated workers increase while real wages of less educated workers may decrease. These results are consistent with the U.S. experience in the 70s and 80s. Based upon differences in legal employment protection we also provide an explanation for the diverging evolution of real and relative wages in Continental Europe.Wage Inequality; Matching; Creation Costs; Firing Costs.