Suchergebnisse

This paper extends the nonparametric method to estimate labor supply developed by Blomquist and Newey (2002) to handle cases in which there are individuals who do not work. The method is then applied to married women in Sweden from 1973 to 1999. For 1999, I find an aggregate uncompensated wage elasticity around 1 and an aggregate income elasticity around -0.05. Furthermore, marginal tax rates are beyond the net government revenue maximizing rates. Despite large labor supply effects, the dramatic evolution of the tax system can only explain a small share of the 58 percent rise in female labor supply during this period.

This paper extends the nonparametric method to estimate labor supply developed by Blomquist and Newey (2002) to handle cases in which there are individuals who do not work. The method is then applied to married women in Sweden from 1973 to 1999. For 1999, I find an aggregate uncompensated wage elasticity around 1 and an aggregate income elasticity around -0.05. Furthermore, marginal tax rates are beyondthe net government revenue maximizing rates. Despite large labor supply effects, the dramatic evolution of the tax system can only explain a small share of the 58 percent rise in female labor supply during this period.

This paper first formulates a model of how the politicians in a local government collectively lobby to raise intergovernmental grants to their local government. The model identifies a relationship between council size and grants received. I then study this relationship empirically using the distribution of intergovernmental grants to the Swedish local governments. I use a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design that exploits a council size law to isolate exogenous variation in council size and find a large negative council size effect. This pattern provides indirect evidence for the occurrence of lobbying. The direction of the effect could be explained by free-riding incentives in individual lobbying effort contribution caused by a collective action problem in grant-raising among local government politicians.

This paper first formulates a model of how the politicians in a local government collectively lobby to raise intergovernmental grants to their local government. The model identifies a relationship between council size and grants received. I then study this relationship empirically using the distribution of intergovernmental grants to the Swedish local governments. I use a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design that exploits a council size law to isolate exogenous variation in council size and find a large negative council size effect. This pattern provides indirect evidence for the occurrence of lobbying. The direction of the effect could be explained by free-riding incentives in individual lobbying effort contribution caused by a collective action problem in grant-raising among local government politicians.

This paper investigates the effect of political representation on the electoral outcome at the party level in a proportional multiparty election system using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation in a council; the first is to hold seats, and the second is to belong to the ruling coalition. I refer to the effect of the former as the incumbency effect and the effect of the latter as the effect of ruling. To identify causal effects, I use the discontinuous variations in the number of seats and ruling (as a coalition receives a majority of the seats) to isolate exogenous variation in incumbency and ruling respectively. I find an advantage of 0.11 percent of the votes for each percent of incumbency. 11 percent of the votes in an election are therefore determined by incumbency, a figure close to the advantage found in majoritarian systems. However, the advantage differs significantly between parties. Further, I find no effects of ruling, contrary to the commonly found cost of ruling in proportional systems.

This paper investigates the effect of political representation on the electoral outcome at the party level in a proportional multiparty election system using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation in a council; the first is to hold seats, and the second is to belong to the ruling coalition. I refer to the effect of the former as the incumbency effect and the effect of the latter as the effect of ruling. To identify causal effects, I use the discontinuous variations in the number of seats and ruling (as a coalition receives a majority of the seats) to isolate exogenous variation in incumbency and ruling respectively. I find an advantage of 0.11 percent of the votes for each percent of incumbency. 11 percent of the votes in an election are therefore determined by incumbency, a figure close to the advantage found in majoritarian systems. However, the advantage differs significantly between parties. Further, I find no effects of ruling, contrary to the commonly found cost of ruling in proportional systems.

Abstract
We investigate the effects of the rise of the Internet as an additional mass medium on news consumption patterns and political attitudes. We use Swedish survey data from 2002 to 2007, the period during which high-speed Internet (broadband) emerged. We find that broadband access is associated with online media consumption. The crowd out of offline consumption is, however, small. Furthermore, these altered news consumption patterns have no or small effects on political attitudes.