The Transcription Factors SOX9 and SOX10 Are Vitiligo Autoantigens in Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome Type I

Vitiligo is common in the hereditary disorder autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type I (APS I). Patients with APS I are known to have high titer autoantibodies directed against various tissue-specific antigens. Using sera from APS I patients for immunoscreening of a cDNA library from human scalp, we identified the transcription factors SOX9 and SOX10 as novel autoantigens related to this syndrome. Immunoreactivity against SOX9 was found in 14 (15%) and against SOX10 in 20 (22%) of the 91 APS I sera studied. All patients reacting with SOX9 displayed reactivity against SOX10, suggesting shared epitopes. Among the 19 patients with vitiligo, 12 (63%) were positive for SOX10 (p0.0001). Furthermore, three of 93 sera from patients with vitiligo unrelated to APS I showed strong reactivity against SOX10, which may indicate a more general role of SOX10 as an autoantigen in vitiligo

Den offentliga sektorn i samhällsekonomin : en problemorienterad studie av ekonomin i Västerbotten

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Institutional Change in the Russian Forest Sector : Stakeholder Participation in Forest Policy FormulationThe Case of Tomsk

This report focuses on the institutional prerequisites for a sustainable exploitation of the forest resources in Tomsk Oblast in West Siberia. Since the spring of 1997, Cerum researcher Mats-Olov Olsson, who is the author of the report, has been working with the Forestry Project at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in a study called "Institutions and the Emergence of Markets - Transition in the Russian Forest Sector." Members of the IIASA research group have looked at problems related to the forest sector institutions in eight Russian regions, including Tomsk and the three regions of north-west Russia (Murmansk, Karelia, and Arkhangelsk).In order to share the results of the study with the people most concerned, i.e., the people living in the Russian case study regions and working in the local forest sector, the study results were presented to forest stakeholders in the respective regions. These stakeholders were also invited to discuss the findings and initiate a process with the aim of generating recommendations for improving the regional forest policy. The policy exercise was chosen as the tool for achieving those goals.This report discusses the rationale for participatory policy formulation processes and the experiences gained through a policy exercise organized in the city of Tomsk in June 2000. The event in Tomsk was a pilot exercise with the purpose of further developing the policy exercise format and techniques

De sovjetiska unionsrepublikernas nationalinkomst : En studie om nationalinkomstens värde som indikator på republikernas ekonomiska utvecklingsnivå

Denna studie om de sovjetiska unionsrepublikernas nationalinkomst har utarbetats inom ramen för projektet "Politiska och sociala förändringar i Sovjetunionen efter 1965 års ekonomiska reform" vid Uppsala Universitets avdelning för öststatsforskning.  Målsättningen för arbetet inom projektet har varit att belysa vissa aspekter av den socio-ekonomiska utvecklingen i de sovjetiska unionsrepublikerna. Med utgångspunkt i den statsvetenskapliga teoribildningen om modernisering har bl a undersökts huruvida de senaste decenniernas ekonomiska utveckling i Sovjetunionen medfört ökade eller minskade regionala skillnader samt i vad mån förändringar i graden av republikernas sociala mobilisering inneburit motsvarande förändringar i deras politiska system. This study of the national income of the Soviet Union republics was performed in a research pro­ject at the former Deptartment of Soviet and East European Research, Uppsala University. The pro­ject, which was headed by Dr. Jan Åke Dellen­brant, was called "Political and Social Changes in the Soviet Union after the 1965 Economic Reforms". This report takes a closer look at what, according to Soviet opinion, was the most important syn­thetic indicator of the level of economic de­velop­ment of the Soviet republics — the national income. The report provides insights into the design and function of the Soviet national accounting system and the Soviet economic system in general. (The project was funded by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.)digitalisering@um

Barriers to change? : understanding the institutional hurdles in the Russian forest sector

The ongoing transformation of the Russian society largely consists in changes in the institutional framework constraining actors' behavior in the emerging market economy. While we have a substantial knowledge about the functioning of a market economy we know very little about how to create such a system. The transition in Eastern Europe offers an opportunity to acquire new knowledge about the prerequisites for the establishment of a market economy. This thesis is based upon research performed in a project called "Institutions and the Emergence of Markets - Transition in the Russian Forest Sector" conducted between 1997 and 2001 at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. The purpose of the study was to identify institutional hurdles for the reformation of the Russian forest sector. The task was approached through a series of case studies of the institutional problems hampering developments in the forest sector of eight Russian regions. Data describing the behavior of forest enterprises was obtained through an interview survey among enterprise leaders in each one of the eight regions. The so-called Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework provided a common design for the eight case study reports comprising the first phase of the project. One such case study report is included in this thesis - the one dealing with institutional problems in the forest sector of the Arkhangelsk Oblast. Based on the previous eight case studies an integrating analysis was made with the purpose of identifying more general characteristics of the institutional framework embedding the Russian forest sector. The results of the analysis were reported in a journal article published in 2001. This article is also included in the thesis. In a third and final phase of the project, the results of the previous studies were disseminated through a series of policy exercises to forest stakeholders in four of the eight case study regions, the purpose being to see if a participatory policy formulation process could be established among regional forest stakeholders. The third paper included in this thesis reports on the results of the policy exercises conducted in the regions of Murmansk, Karelia, and Arkhangelsk in the autumn of 2000 and the spring of 2001. As this thesis illustrates, transforming the old Soviet command economy into a modern market system is a formidably complex task. The reforms taken early during the transition (e.g., privatization and price liberalization) triggered a series of spontaneous changes in the economy actually threatening to bankrupt many Russian enterprises and ultimately to upset the entire social order. However, the development also triggered its own response in that it made many market non-viable enterprises enter the so- called virtual economy. Here enterprises exchanged goods and services through barter trade thus avoiding true market competition. In fact, many of the rules-in-use (institutions) constraining the behavior of actors in the virtual economy originated in the old Soviet command system. A major problem with the virtual economy is that it maintains the sub-optimal resource allocation typical of the command economy. The findings reported in this thesis empirically corroborate central hypotheses generated by the theory of the virtual economy. Some ideas are also explored about ways to disentangle the institutional deadlock preventing a large part of the forest enterprises from restructuring to become viable in the emerging Russian market economy. The study arrived at the very general conclusion that there are no easy top- down procedures that automatically will lead to an efficiently functioning Russian market economy. The results contest the claims made by the "shock therapy" school of (mainly western) reform advisors to the Russian government. While certain basic reform measures could not be introduced gradually, there was no ground for expecting rapid automatic and profound positive changes in the institutional framework constraining actors' behavior in the Russian economy. On the contrary, the institutional deadlock characterizing the Russian economy will take a long time (and quite innovative thinking) to disentangle. The problem consists in envisaging a way to introduce institutional changes with the multiple purpose of improving the efficiency of the economy (raising people's standard of living) while at the same time improving the workings of democracy and doing so in a society where the existing institutional framework does not work properly. The study led to a number of specific conclusions relating to the possibilities of reforming the Russian forest sector, making the institutional framework constraining actors' behavior more conducive to economic efficiency. It was found that there is a need for changes throughout the entire institutional hierarchy, ranging from constitutional rules, through collective choice rules, to operational rules. Separation of duties and obligations between the political and economic spheres of society should be an underlying principle in all these changes. It was also suggested that policies for improving the institutional framework governing the Russian regional forest sector should be elaborated in a dialogue with the stakeholders who are directly affected by malfunctioning of the sector. The study showed that the use of policy exercises for elaborating improved forest policies seems feasible although the Russian civil society is (still) not sufficiently developed to allow participatory policy formulation procedures to work effectively.Godkänd; 2004; 20070116 (haneit

De sovjetiska unionsrepublikernas nationalinkomst : En studie om nationalinkomstens värde som indikator på republikernas ekonomiska utvecklingsnivå

Denna studie om de sovjetiska unionsrepublikernas nationalinkomst har utarbetats inom ramen för projektet "Politiska och sociala förändringar i Sovjetunionen efter 1965 års ekonomiska reform" vid Uppsala Universitets avdelning för öststatsforskning.  Målsättningen för arbetet inom projektet har varit att belysa vissa aspekter av den socio-ekonomiska utvecklingen i de sovjetiska unionsrepublikerna. Med utgångspunkt i den statsvetenskapliga teoribildningen om modernisering har bl a undersökts huruvida de senaste decenniernas ekonomiska utveckling i Sovjetunionen medfört ökade eller minskade regionala skillnader samt i vad mån förändringar i graden av republikernas sociala mobilisering inneburit motsvarande förändringar i deras politiska system. This study of the national income of the Soviet Union republics was performed in a research pro­ject at the former Deptartment of Soviet and East European Research, Uppsala University. The pro­ject, which was headed by Dr. Jan Åke Dellen­brant, was called "Political and Social Changes in the Soviet Union after the 1965 Economic Reforms". This report takes a closer look at what, according to Soviet opinion, was the most important syn­thetic indicator of the level of economic de­velop­ment of the Soviet republics — the national income. The report provides insights into the design and function of the Soviet national accounting system and the Soviet economic system in general. (The project was funded by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.)digitalisering@um

Changes in Market Behaviour Among Russian Forest Enterprises

The article reports on a follow-up of a case study conducted in 1998-1999 investigating the rules governing the behaviour of Russian forest enterprises. The new study, carried out in 2011-2012, used the same survey in interviews with a subset of the enterprises that took part in the original investigation. The objective was to see whether enterprises' behaviour and the rules governing their behaviour had become more market efficient since our original study. The new study showed that, over a ten-year period, the behaviour of the surveyed enterprises became better adapted to rules governing a modern market economy. However, many traits of the virtual economy remained

Continuity and change : institutions and transition in the Russian forest sector

This thesis analyses the relation between institutions and the emergence of markets in the context of the Russian transition since the beginning of the 1990s. Introducing democracy and market economic relations in Russia are goals that require profound changes in the institutional framework inherited from the Soviet Union. Institutions are "rules-in-use" governing interactions in the socio-economic system. Institutions tend to change slowly, either spontaneously in response to changes in the environment in which the system is embedded, or as a result of collective decisions by citizens or their representatives. The topics discussed in this thesis can be framed through the following questions: What is the general role of institutions in the ongoing changes in Russian society? Are there institutions that hamper the transition process towards democracy and a market economy? If so, how do they hamper this process? How can such institutions be changed to better serve the needs of the emerging market system? To what extent must new institutions be substituted for old in order to improve the situation? The studies reported in the thesis address these questions from different but related perspectives. Based on analyses of previous research, official statistical data, and a series of case studies of forest enterprises in eight Russian regions it is shown (in article I) that a specific and, in a market economic perspective, utterly peculiar institutional set-up, the virtual economy, came to govern forest enterprises' behaviour in the early phase of the Russian transition. For reasons having to do with the special resource allocation model of the Soviet command economy a large share of the enterprises that Russia inherited after the disintegration of the Soviet Union was miserably unfit to meet market competition. If forced to meet global market competition many (if not most) of them would have been threatened with bankruptcy. Since there was no institutional infrastructure that could mitigate such massive disruptive events and reallocate resources into new profitable production activities, the consequences would likely have been devastating for the whole Russian society. In this situation, to avoid bankruptcy and stay alive, many enterprises "insulated" themselves from market competition by entering the virtual economy and engaging in non-monetary transactions with other enterprises in a similar predicament. While the first article (I) identifies pertinent characteristics of the institutional set-up defining the virtual economy in the context of the Russian regional forest sector, the second article (II) addresses the issue of how to introduce institutional changes through a collectively chosen design process. Policy exercises were used as a tool for conducting this systemic intervention with the purpose of initiating participatory policy formulating processes in four of the previous case study regions. It was found that, in principle, policy exercises could be an efficient vehicle for a participatory elaboration of policy proposals in Russia. However, in the current political context stakeholders' insufficient trust in public procedures and the weakness of civic organisations hampered a successful participatory Russian forest policy formulation. In the third article (III) one of the previous case study regions (Arkhangelsk Oblast) was revisited and a second round of interviews was made with forest enterprises that took part in the previous study (I). The purpose of the study was to see if the behaviour typical of the virtual economy was giving way to a more market efficient behaviour. The analysis indicated that this was indeed the case, a result that was further corroborated by an analysis of statistical data pertaining to the development in all of Russia. The thesis is based on the assumptions that the process of designing and introducing new or modified institutions to govern actors' behaviour, and to do this in a way that ensures the legitimacy of the resulting policy proposals, is greatly facilitated and improved by the existence of functioning democratic procedures. The last article (IV) discusses the functioning of Russian democracy using a conceptual model for assessing the efficiency of the Russian political market. It is argued that such a model must embrace both the structure and agency characteristics of the political market. To illustrate the approach, a survey was made of recent institutional changes affecting the structure of the Russian political market. The analysis indicated that several reforms introduced in the last few years have improved the structural prerequisites for democracy and more efficiently functioning political market behaviour in Russia. The thesis is believed to contribute to our understanding of the role of institutions in building democracy and market economies in transition countries.Godkänd; 2008; 20080602 (ysko)</p

Den offentliga sektorn i samhällsekonomin : en problemorienterad studie av ekonomin i Västerbotten

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