THE HORSE SECTOR: DOES IT MATTER FOR AGRICULTURE?

EU policies focus ever more on rural development initiatives. The horse sector provides some opportunities. An I/O model is used to examine the aggregate effects of the horse sector on Swedish agriculture. The maximal potential of the sector accounts for around 12% of the total contribution to GDP by agriculture.Horse sector, Input-Output, Livestock Production/Industries, Q19,

Income Inequality and Health: Lessons from a Refugee Residential Assignment Program

This paper examines the effect of income inequality on health for a group of particularly disadvantaged individuals: refugees. Our analysis draws on longitudinal hospitalization records coupled with a settlement policy where Swedish authorities assigned newly arrived refugees to their first area of residence. The policy was implemented in a way that provides a source of plausibly random variation in initial location. The results reveal no statistically significant effect of income inequality on the risk of being hospitalized. This finding holds also for most population subgroups and when separating between different types of diagnoses. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out large effects of income inequality on health.Income inequality; Immigration; Quasi-experiment

Income Inequality and Health: Lessons from a Residential Assignment Program

This paper investigates how income inequality affects health. Although a large literature has shown that inhabitants in areas with greater income inequality suffer from worse health, past studies are severely plagued by inadequate data, non-random residential sorting and reverse causality. We address these problems using longitudinal population hospitalization data coupled with a settlement policy where Swedish authorities distributed newly arrived refugee immigrants to their initial area of residence. The policy was implemented in a way that provides a source of plausibly random variation in initial location. Our empirical analysis reveals no statistically significant effect of income inequality on the probability of being hospitalized. This finding holds also when investigating subgroups more vulnerable to negative health influences and when studying different types of diseases. There is however some indications of a detrimental effect on older persons’ health; but the magnitude of the effect is small. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out large effects of income inequality on health.Income inequality; Immigration; Quasi-experiment

Firm location, Corporate Structure, R&D Investment, Innovation and Productivity

This study elucidates the relationship between localisation of firms, corporate structure, intellectual capital and innovations.The main finding is that a greater concentration of multinational firms, human capital, T&D and universities is significantly and positive associated with research productivity. All other things equal, such as firm size, sector classification, human capital, corporate owner structure and R&D investment, the return to an invested Euro in R&D is, at the margin, greatest for firms localized to the capital of Sweden, compared to four other large regions. However, surprisingly Stockholm firms also have a lower propensity to cooperate with scientific, vertical and horisontal innovation systems. This may reflect limitations of popular survey-based information such as Community Innovation Survey data to capture spillover and the importance of informal collaborative relationships within regions.

Family Business, Employment, and GDP

We analyze the proportion of family business and its contribution to employment and gross domestic product (GDP). Our analysis adds to the literature by including all listed firms and by investigating a longer period than has heretofore been reported. The main contribution is to extend the analysis to include all firms in the economy using census data. Our study is devoted to the case of Sweden. Family business makes up half of the listed firms, and three quarters of all firms, accounting for one-fourth of total employment, and one-fifth of GDP. Their importance has increased during the period studied.Family Firms; Employment; GDP; Sweden; Ownership

HCCI Operating Range in a Turbo-charged Multi Cylinder Engine with VVT and Spray-Guided DI

Homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) has been identified as a promising way to increase the efficiency of the spark-ignited engine, while maintaining low emissions. The challenge with HCCI combustion is excessive pressure rise rate, quantified here with Ringing Intensity. Turbocharging enables increased dilution of the charge and thus a reduction of the Ringing Intensity. The engine used is an SI four cylinder base with 2.2\emph{L} displacement and is equipped with a turbocharger. Combustion phasing control is achieved with individual intake/ exhaust cam phasing. Fuel injection with spray guided design is used. Cycle resolved combustion state is monitored and used for controlling the engine either in closed or open loop where balancing of cylinder to cylinder variations has to be done to run the engine at high HCCI load. When load is increased the NOx levels rise, the engine is then run in stoichiometric HCCI mode to be able to use a simple three-way catalyst. The fuel used is 95 RON pump gasoline and injection strategies are evaluated in order to maintain low soot levels and high efficiency. Limitations and benefits on operating range are examined between 1000 and 3000 rpm. This paper investigates how to extend the HCCI range and how to reduce the high pressure rise rate with: increased boost from turbocharging, external EGR and different injection strategies. A higher boost pressure was found to extend the load range. It is shown that the limitation from high RI, NOx or soot is not the same in all engine speed and load points. By turbocharging the engine in HCCI mode there is greater flexibility to increase the range of practical operating points

The Effect of Intake Temperature in a Turbocharged Multi Cylinder Engine operating in HCCI mode

The operating range in HCCI mode is limited by the excessive pressure rise rate and therefore high combustion induced noise. The HCCI range can be extended with turbocharging which enables increased dilution of the charge and thus a reduction of combustion noise. When the engine is turbocharged the intake charge will have a high temperature at increased boost pressure and can then be regulated in a cooling circuit. Limitations and benefits are examed at 2250 rpm and 400 kPa indicated mean effective pressure. It is shown that combustion stability, combustion noise and engine efficiency have to be balanced since they have optimums at different intake temperatures and combustion timings. The span for combustion timings with high combustion stability is narrower at some intake temperatures and the usage of external EGR can improve the combustion stability. It is found that the standard deviation of combustion timing is a useful tool for evaluating cycle to cycle variations. One of the benefits with HCCI is the low pumping losses, but when load and boost pressure is increased there is an increase in pumping losses when using negative valve overlap. The pumping losses can then be circumvented to some extent with a low intake temperature or EGR, leading to more beneficial valve timings at high load

Retraites : à la recherche de solutions miracles...

Malgré la réforme de 2003, l’avenir du système français de retraite n’est pas assuré : l’inquiétude persiste tant sur sa soutenabilité financière que sur l’évolution du niveau des retraites ; son équité est mise en doute en raison des disparités entre public et privé ou entre générations ; le taux d’emploi des seniors n’a guère progressé. L’article analyse deux propositions de réforme. Bozio et Piketty proposent d’introduire un système unifié basé sur des comptes individuels notionnels. Certes, son équilibre financier serait automatiquement réalisé, mais au prix d’une forte baisse du taux de remplacement, baisse qui s’accentuerait avec l’allongement de la durée de vie. Hairault, Langot et Sopraseuth proposent d’introduire de fortes incitations financières (surcote en capital ou cumul emploi-retraite) au report de l’âge de la retraite. Ces propositions prétendent favoriser le libre choix du départ à la retraite et respecter la neutralité actuarielle, mais ne tiennent pas compte des différences d’employabilité et d’espérance de vie des salariés à 60 ans. Elles creuseraient les inégalités entre retraités et ne sont pas compatibles avec le contrat implicite de gestion des carrières. Basant le niveau de la retraite sur des choix individuels, elles dégageraient la société et les entreprises de leurs responsabilités : garantir la parité de niveau de vie entre retraités et salariés, assurer une retraite satisfaisante aux salariés que les entreprises ne veulent plus employer

Demographic and economic trends in a rural Europe in transition

Rural Europe is in a phase of huge transition both from a demographic and economic-structural point of view. This paper is focused on demographic and economic-structural changes in differing rural areas and the connection between these processes. This does not exclude the relations to urban areas as population changes in rural areas cannot be analyzed without taking the urban population development on board in the analyses. This is of course especially important with regard to the migratory movements where in-migration to urban areas in many cases is dependent of out-migration from rural areas. It has also been shown that rural areas have different migration patterns where many in the surroundings of big cities have experienced a positive population development as an effect of both natural population increase and net in-migration. The contrary is, however, the case in peripheral and remote rural areas where contrary development paths often seem to be the fact. It must here also be highlighted that out-migration also results in eroding reproduction potentials as out-migration of young women accentuate the effects of the drops in fertility. These processes are related to the economic-structural changes both in rural areas and urban ones. Natural population change has, thus, lost its primacy as the dominant factor behind regional population development both in positive and negative ways as the European regions ? urban as well as rural ? have been transformed from high fertility societies to low fertility ones. Instead it is migration that is the prime driver with regard to population development ? both in negative and positive ways in urban as well as rural regions. The 'rural exodus' is in many cases still the rule. In order to analyze and illustrate the differing demographic development paths and the differing preconditions for transformation an economic-structural typology developed within the ESPON/EDORA-project combined with an extended OECD accessibility typology will be used (the Dijkstra-Poelmann typology) by cross-tabulation. This means that distance and accessibility as well as economic and structural traits will be integrated in the analyses of expanding and shrinking regions. The time dimension will be from the beginning of the 1990s up to the latest possible year (2012). The analyses are based on the demographic and economic-structural development at NUTS3-level as this is the lowest level for using quantitative data concerning analyses of demographic and economic-structural changes at a meaningful geographical scale and the connections between these transformation processes in a quantitative way