The Development of Swedish Tourism Public Policy 1930-2010

In this article, the development and changes in Swedish public policy relating to tourism from the 1930s to 2010 is described and interpreted from a political economy perspective. A case study, compiled from mainly secondary sources, is analyzed from a theoretical framework based on regulation theory. The purpose with this study is to increase the understanding of how the macro political economy context has influenced the policy-making in tourism in Sweden, but also to make a contribution to an area which seems to be quite neglected when it comes to research. The changes are analyzed according to the three periods denoted as pre-Fordism (mid-19th century-1930s), Fordism (1930s-1970s) and post-Fordism (1970s to present). It is observed how the general changes between these periods regarding aspects such as regulation and deregulation, and the degree of state involvement, have affected tourism policy making. The tourism policy making has changed from being insignificant, to a high degree of state involvement including planning, control and supervision, to a situation where the market rather than government regulation is considered as state of the art. 

Modeling and illustrating requirement prioritization in public e-service development from a value-based perspective

A major problem in e-service development is the prioritization of the requirements of different stakeholders. The main stakeholders are governments and their citizens, all of whom have different and sometimes conflicting requirements. In this paper, the prioritization problem is addressed by combining a value-based approach with an illustration technique. This paper examines the following research question: How can multiple stakeholder requirements be illustrated from a value-based perspective in order to be prioritizable? We used an e-service development case taken from a Swedish municipality to elaborate on our approach. Our contributions are: 1) a model of the relevant domains for requirement prioritization for government, citizens, technology, finances and laws and regulations; and 2) a requirement fulfillment analysis tool (RFA) that consists of a requirement-goal-value matrix (RGV), and a calculation and illustration module (CIM). The model reduces cognitive load, helps developers to focus on value fulfillment in e-service development and supports them in the formulation of requirements. It also offers an input to public policy makers, should they aim to target values in the design of e-services.

On administrative borders and accessibility to public services: : The case of hospitals in Sweden.

An administrative border might hinder the optimal allocation of a given set of resources by restricting the flow of goods, services, and people. In this paper we address the question: Do administrative borders lead to poor accessibility to public service such as hospitals? In answering the question, we have examined the case of Sweden and its regional borders. We have used detailed data on the Swedish road network, its hospitals, and its geo-coded population. We have assessed the population’s spatial accessibility to Swedish hospitals by computing the inhabitants’ distance to the nearest hospital. We have also elaborated several scenarios ranging from strongly confining regional borders to no confinements of borders and recomputed the accessibility. Our findings imply that administrative borders are only marginally worsening the accessibility.

High-School Students´ Summer Jobs and their Ensuing Labor Market Achievement : the Long Term Effect

In part because of high and persistent youth unemployment, adolescent students’ transition from school to work is an important policy and research topic. Many countries have implemented public programs offering summer jobs or work while in high-school as measures to smooth the transition. While the immediate effect of the programs on school attendance, school grades, and disposable income is well documented, their effect on the transition to the labor market remains an open question. Observational studies have shown strong positive effects of summer jobs, but also that the estimated effect is highly vulnerable to selection bias. In this paper, some 3700 high-school students applying for summer jobs in the period 1995-2003,via a program, are followed to 30 years of age. A quarter of the applicants were randomly offered a summer job each year. Among the remaining students, 50% had a (non-program related) summer job while in high-school. We find the income, post high-school, for the offered and non-offered groups to be similar and conclude that the effect of summer jobs on the transition to the labor market is inconsequential.

Growth, migration and unemployment across Swedish municipalities

Fundamental questions in economics are why some regions are richer than others, why their economic growth rates vary, whether their growth tends to converge and the key factors that contribute to the variations. These questions have not yet been fully addressed, but changes in the local tax base are clearly influenced by the average income growth rate, net migration rate, and changes in unemployment rates. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to explore in depth the interactive effects of these factors (and local policy variables) in Swedish municipalities, by estimating a proposed three-equation system. Our main finding is that increases in local public expenditures and income taxes have negative effects on subsequent local income growth. In addition, our results support the conditional convergence hypothesis, i.e. that average income tends to grow more rapidly in relatively poor local jurisdictions than in initially “richer” jurisdictions, conditional on the other explanatory variables.