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

Hugo Claude Horack, 1877-1958

Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka ifall och om så även hur Wikileaks och Julian Assange porträtteras före och efter de våldtäktsanklagelser mot Assange som offentliggjordes i augusti 2010. I den diskursanalys som genomförs granskas sex nyhetsartiklar som valts ut efter bestämda tidsaspekter men i övrigt slumpmässigt. Artiklarna har publicerats i Dagens Nyheter och släppts från TT. Analysen bygger delvis på en ram lagd av teoretikerna Ernesto Laclau och Chantal Mouffe, och på teori och metodik beskriven av Norman Fairclough, och som handlar om att sätta diskursiva praktiker i samband med social och kulturell utveckling. Analysen är komparativ och fokuserar på det retoriskt diskursiva. Undersökningen visar att det finns en diskrepans mellan språkbruket i de artiklar som publicerats innan 2010 och de som publicerats efter tidpunkten. Det visar sig också vara så att Julian Assange och Wikileaks kopplas samman i större utsträckning före och efter 2010. Den största förändringen i språkvalet är ett större ifrågasättande av trovärdighet och motiv för materialsläpp vad gäller Wikileaks, som går parallellt med en beskrivning av Assange som blir allt mer opersonlig efter 2010. Organisationen fortsätter att vara en källa för DN och TT men i synnerhet deras motiv och trovärdighet ifrågasätts

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

The Interaction Between Labor Market Policy and Monetary Policy: An Analysis of Time Inconsistency Problems

This paper studies the interaction between time inconsistency problems in labor market policy and monetary policy. When both policies are discretionary, there is a positive inflation bias, whereas the bias in labor market programs may be either positive or negative. A commitment of labor market programs to zero increases inflation, as compared to the case when both labor market policy and monetary policy are discretionary. Delegation of labor market policy to a liberal labor market board may improve the discretionary outcome, even if labor market programs crowd out regular employment. A conservative central bank always reduces the social loss, even when monetary policy interacts with labor market policy.TBA

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

Publicity for Lawyers

Antalet förstainsatsaktörer i Sverige idag utanför de traditionella (räddningstjänst, polis och ambulans) är få, och lite forskning har förts på området. Det finns dock exempel där räddningstjänsten har anlitat väktarbolag eller utrustat hemtjänstpersonal med pulversläckare. Flertalet av dessa samarbeten är relativt nystartade och få utvärderingar har gjorts som visar de faktiska effekterna av dem. Syftet med denna rapport är att beskriva och kartlägga samhällekonomiska nyttor och kostnader av icke-traditionella förstainsatsaktörer som samarbetar med räddningstjänsten. Studien har genomförts genom fallstudier av två samarbeten; Söderköping räddningstjänst som har ett avtal med LA Jour &amp; Säkerhet AB samt Södertörns brandförsvarsförbund (SBBF) som samarbetar med väktarbolag i Södertälje och Botkyrka. Sju semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med representanter från väktarbolag, räddningstjänst och kommun. Den metod som används vid analysen är nationalekonomisk kostnadsnyttoanalys. De nyttor som har identifierats är att väktarna sparar tid, bidrar med lägesrapporter, stöttar insatserna genom att vara behjälpliga på plats, upptäcker incidenter eller bränder vid rondering. De har god lokalkännedom och kan hjälpa till att låsa upp brandbommar och dörrar, vilket indirekt sparar tid åt räddningstjänsten. Samarbetet bidrar också till att de arbetar preventivt; de pratar med ungdomar och andra grupper i samhället och skapar relationer som på sikt har möjlighet att gagna säkerheten och tryggheten i kommunen. Kostnaderna för att utbilda och utrusta väktarna är idag låga. Däremot har det framkommit att väktarna gärna skulle vilja ha mer utbildning så att de kan rycka ut vid fler typer av larm. Det har även framkommit att bättre kommunikationskanaler skulle kunna bidra till ökade möjligheter att åka på fler larm och att vara bättre förberedda på vad de kan bidra med vid olika typer av larm. Den kvantitativa analysen utförs för samarbetet i Söderköping och visar att detta har en hög utdelning. Varje investerad krona i Söderköping har gett en avkastning på åtta kronor, när värdet av den minskade insatstid som väktarna bidrar med beräknas. Nyttan är dock undervärderad då många nyttor (beskrivna ovan) inte kan värdesättas monetärt. Det som har begränsat den kvantitativa analysen är det faktum att väktarnas rapportering i Botkyrka och Södertälje inte särskiljer räddningstjänstsuppdrag från övriga uppdrag. Detta hade möjliggjort en kvantitativ analys även för samarbetet med Södertörn, vilket hade kunnat bidra till att resultaten blivit applicerbara på fler kommuner. Emellertid finns inget som indikerar att andra kommuner inte kommer att erfara samma effekter eller kostnader som de undersökta samarbetena har lett till. Däremot bör kommuner analysera behov och förutsättningar i sin kommun för samarbeten av det här slaget innan de inför dem med tanke på att det uppstår kostnader, om än låga