Visualism and technification—the patient behind the screen

At stake in this study is the patient's credibility. The Cartesian philosophical standpoint, which holds sway in western thinking, questions with scepticism whether the reported symptoms are “real.” Do they reside in the body, or are they mentally concocted. However, from the caring perspective any symptom must be both listened and attended to in its own right, not just scrutinized as evidence for an accurate diagnosis

BNP-prognoser och mål för inflationsprognoser - Sannolikhetsskattningar av framtida vändningspunkter i amerikansk och svensk BNP

Svensson (1997) föreslår att centralbanker på grund av implementerings- och utvärderingssvårigheter hos inflationsmål även bör ha ett mål för inflationsprognoser. Han argumenterar för detta med hjälp av en teoretisk modell som antar att den korta räntan, som centralbanken kontrollerar, påverkar BNP-gapet med en periods fördröjning, vilket sedan påverkar inflationen efter ännu en period. För att man ska kunna genomföra tillförlitliga inflationsprognoser krävs därför att man även kan prognostisera BNP-gapet med gott resultat. Nuvarande BNP-prognoser är dock oprecisa, vilket skapar problem i bedrivandet av penningpolitik. Uppsatsen undersöker därför om man istället kan prediktera vändningspunkter och konjunkturer i BNP med hjälp av en binär sannolikhetsmodell och sedan använda resultaten av dessa som underlag för att bestämma hur den korta räntan ska förändras. Närmare bestämt undersöks i uppsatsen om man med hjälp av probitmodellen kan prediktera konjunkturer och vändningspunkter i BNP ett, två och tre år framåt i tiden. Undersökningsländerna är USA och Sverige. Slutsatsen är att modellerna som testas i uppsatsen varken kan prediktera vändningspunkter eller konjunkturer

Manoeuvring between anxiety and control: Patients' experience of learning to live with diabetes: A lifeworld phenomenological study

Abstract Research shows that people with diabetes want their lives to proceed as normally as possible, but some patients experience difficulty in reaching their desired goals with treatment. The learning process is a complex phenomenon interwoven into every facet of life. Patients and healthcare providers often have different perspectives in care which gives different expectations on what the patients need to learn and cope with. The aim of this study, therefore, is to describe the experience of learning to live with diabetes. Interviews were conducted with 12 patients afflicted with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The interviews were then analysed with reference to the reflective lifeworld research approach. The analysis shows that when the afflicted realize that their bodies undergo changes and that blood sugar levels are not always balanced as earlier in life, they can adjust to their new conditions early. The afflicted must take responsibility for balancing their blood sugar levels and incorporating the illness into their lives. Achieving such goals necessitates knowledge. The search for knowledge and sensitivity to changes are constant requirements for people with diabetes. Learning is driven by the tension caused by the need for and dependence on safe blood sugar control, the fear of losing such control, and the fear of future complications. The most important responsibilities for these patients are aspiring to understand their bodies as lived bodies, ensuring safety and security, and acquiring the knowledge essential to making conscious choices

Facilitating a dedicated focus on the human dimensions of care in practice settings: Development of a new Humanised Care Assessment Tool (HCAT) to sensitise care.

There is limited consensus about what constitutes humanly sensitive care, or how it can be sustained in care settings. A new Humanised Care Assessment Tool may point to caring practices that are up to the task of meeting persons as humans within busy healthcare environments. This paper describes qualitative development of a tool that is conceptually sensitive to human dimensions of care informed by a lifeworld philosophical orientation. Items were generated to reflect eight theoretical dimensions that constitute what makes care feel humanly focused. An action research group process in 2014-2015 with researchers, service users, healthcare professionals in two diverse clinical settings (stroke rehabilitation and dermatology) was used. Feedback on conceptual content, transparency of meaning and readability was then gained from a panel in Sweden and third year student nurses in the UK. The tool can be applied to attune staff to human dimensions of care, offering items which point to concrete examples of humanising and dehumanising features of practice in ways that have not yet been fully captured in the caring literature. Based on theoretically-led experiential items, with dedicated focus on what makes people feel more, or less than human, it may offer improvement on available assessments of care

Public Policy, Household Finance and the Macroeconomy

The thesis contains four separate essays, spanning questions of the interaction between public policy, household finance and the macroeconomy. How does public policy affect macroeconomic outcomes, and the choices and welfare of households, and what are households’ optimal financial responses to changes in macroeconomic environments? Furthermore, the thesis includes a development of a method, which is helpful to answer questions like the ones stated above.  The first essay, Optimal Public Policy in a Multi-Sector Economy with Asymmetric Shocks, shows how fiscal policy can complement monetary policy. It is shown that fiscal policy can be used to improve macroeconomic outcomes and make the economy more efficient. Since fiscal policy, in general, includes more instruments than monetary policy, it is possible to neutralize several frictions in the economy simultaneously. This is shown in a general equilibrium model with dynastic households, where firms face monopolistic competition, sticky prices, productivity shocks and cost-push shocks.  The second essay, On the Design of Mortgage Default Legislation, asks how different types of mortgage contracts interact with different types of mortgage default policies regarding the probability of a default on home-owner’s mortgage. The different types of mortgage contracts analyzed are fixed rate annuity mortgages, adjustable rate amortized mortgages and adjustable rate non-amortized mortgages. The mortgage default policies span from non-recourse (where the mortgage lender takes all the default risk) to full recourse (where the borrower takes all the default risk). It is shown that a “borrower friendly” non-recourse policy is, as the one implemented in many parts of the United States, not necessarily borrower friendly due to its effect on the risk premium. This is investigated in a model with finitely lived households and an endogenous risk premium.  The third essay, On The Empirical Relevance of Cointegration Between Stock Market Returns and Labor Income on Optimal Portfolio Choice, investigates how finitely lived households optimally choose a portfolio consisting of risk-free bonds and risky equity, and how this choice is affected by the long-run correlation between risky (cumulative) equity returns and stochastic labor income. More specifically, I investigate if the empirical cointegration (long-run correlation) between the two variables is strong enough to affect the optimal portfolio choice.  It is shown that it is not. Cointegration exists between the two variables, but the speed-of-adjustment back to the cointegration equilibrium is to slow to have a significant effect on the households’ optimal portfolios.  The fourth essay, Solving Dynamic Programming Problems Using Stochastic Grids and Nearest-Neighbor Interpolation, describes a new computational method, which is used in the second and third essays. The method is developed to solve models with finitely lived households who face a complex economic environment. Post-state decision rules for the households are used together with simulated stochastic grids over the exogenous variables. By simulating the grids it is possible to reduce the number of grid points that the model is solved for, thereby making it significantly faster to solve models with many exogenous state variables. It is shown that it is possible to solve non-linear life-cycle models including at least eight state variables relatively quickly on a standard desktop computer.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p