Hårdare tag i arbetslivet? : Åtgärder mot arbetsrelaterat våld i facklig press 1978–2004

Preventing violence at work: A study of descriptions of safety measures in Swedish trade union journals 1978–2004 The purpose of this study is to examine if perceptions of interventions aimed at violence in the workplace have changed since the 1970s. In the beginning of the study period, structural factors are seen as the dominating explanation for workplace violence. The crime perspective rises in the 1990’s and methods of intervention becomes the control- and justice functions of larger society. The result shows search for accountability to be a salient factor for understanding the development towards an increasing use of penal sanctions.

De oauktoriserade migranterna i svensk byggnadssektor : En studie i deportationspolitik 1990–2004

The unauthorized migrants in the Swedish construction sector – a study in the policy of deportation 1990–2004 The unauthorized migration of construction workers to Sweden increased during the 1990s, especially at the end of the decade. The migrants often came from Poland and the Baltic states. The aim of this article is to examine this change of the migration pattern to Sweden and how the Swedish Building Workers Union responded to this new situation. I examine how the Building Workers Union cooperated with the Police authorities to find, capture and deport unauthorized migrants. A conclusion is that the Building Workers Union has not adopted a more inclusionary strategy towards unauthorized migrants, as have trade unions in Spain and US. The main strategy has instead been to try to restrict this migration. One explanation of this is that the Building Workers Union is a strong and well organized trade union. It didn’t perceive of unauthorized migrants as potential new members, but as a threat to wages and work conditions. Another explanation is that it has been able to restrict migration in the past. This may contribute to making demands for restrictions an attractive strategy in the present even when the possibilities of succeeding with this have diminished.

Våld på jobbet : Beskrivningar av våld i arbetslivet 1978–2004 i facklig press

Violence at work as a social problem: a study of the media coverage on workplace violence in Swedish trade union journals 1978–2004 The main purpose of this study was to find out the extent of the unions media coverage on workplace violence and the ways in which the topic was framed. The study shows that the reporting of violence in the workplace described in journals is on a stable level during the period 1978–98. However from the year 2000 and onwards, there is a clear increase in the attention. Four categories of workplace violence were used to identify and recognize different types of violence: intrusive-, consumer-, relationship-and organizational violence. This shows that much of the attention over time has shifted from intrusive violence to organizational violence and consumer violence. What seems to have happened is that workplace violence has become more than just robberies and assaults in the retail business. The stereotypical image of the criminal is challenged by non-traditional criminals like nurses, elderly people and companies. Certain groups, e.g. care workers, come to account for an increasing proportion of attention, both as perpetrators and victims of violence. This study is an important step in understanding the increased reports of workplace violence in Sweden.

Preferenser och intressen hos Svenskt Näringsliv och Landsorganisationen om arbetskraftsinvandring under 2000-talets inledning

Preferences and interests of SN and LO about labour migration in the early 2000s The article uses a political economy approach to analyze the preferences of the social partners SN and LO and to identify the coincided and disparate interests which the two organizations tried to defend in relation to labour migration in the debate prior to the Swedish labour migration policy reform in 2008. In contrast to presumptions by Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) scholars,the results of this article reveal that SN has preferred a market-liberal labour migration policy regime at odds with institutional traditions of the Swedish labour market model. However, LO has instead preferred a state-coordinated and regulated labour migration policy regime. In contrast to SN, LO’s preferences reflected basic trade union interests to limit the supply of labour and to minimize potential negative effects for the functioning of the Swedish labour market model. Moreover, the article suggests the importance of changed power relations between the social partners and a shift of Swedish government to explain SN’s influence in the debate prior to the labour migration policy change 2008 in a market-liberal direction.

Trade effects of exchange rate fluctuations: Evidence from Sweden

An overview of the theoretical literature for the last two decades suggests that there is no clear-cut relationship one can pin down between exchange rate volatility and trade flows. Analytical results are based on specific assumptions and only hold in certain cases. Especially, the impact of exchange rate volatility on export and import activity investigated separately leads also to dissimilar conclusions among countries studied. The general presumption is that an increase in exchange rate volatility will have an adverse effect on trade flows and consequently, the overall heath of the world economy. However, neither theoretical models nor empirical studies provide us with a definitive answer, leaving obtained results highly ambiguous and inconsistent (Baum and Caglayan, 2006). We purposed to empirically investigate trade effects of exchange rate fluctuations in Sweden from the perspective of export and import in this research. The data comprises period from January 1993 to December 2006, where export and import volumes are considered from the point of their determinants, including exchange rate volatility, which has been measured through EGARCH model. The results for the case of Sweden show that short run dynamics of volatility negatively associated with both export and import, whereas considered from the case of previous period volatility it exhibits positive relationship. These results are consistent with the most findings of prior studies, where the relationship remained ambiguous.

Euroland - The effect of Euro on international trade : Are there winners and losers in this ''Euro-game''?

This paper examines whether European Monetary Union (EMU) countries share fairly the effect of their membership in Eurozone (EZ) or whether are winners and losers in this ''Euro-game''. By using panel data of 27 European Union (EU) Member States for the period 2001-2012 in the context of a gravity model, we focus on estimating the Euro’s effect on bilateral trade and we detect whether this effect differs across the Member States of EZ. Two estimation methods are applied: Pooled OLS estimator and Fixed Effects estimator. The empirical results come to the conclusion that the individual country effects differ and are statistically significant, indicating that EMU’s effect on trade differs across the Member States of EZ. The overall effect of the Euro is statistically insignificant, regardless the estimation method, demonstrating that the common European currency may have no effect on bilateral trade.

Entry, re-location and growth in the Swedish wholesale trade industry

Wholesale trade has an intermediate position between manufacturing and retail in the distributional channel. In modern economies, consumers buy few, if any, products directly from manufacture or producer. Instead, it is a wholesaler, who is in direct contact with producers, buying goods in larger quantities and selling them in smaller quantities to retailers. Traditionally, the main function of a wholesaler has been to push goods along the distributional channel from producer to retailer, or other nonend user. However, the function of wholesalers usually goes beyond the process of the physical distribution of goods. Wholesalers also arrange storage, perform market analyses, promote trade or provide technical support to consumers (Riemers 1998). The existence of wholesalers (and other intermediaries) in the distributional channel is based on the effective and efficient performance of distribution services, that are needed by producers and other members of the supply chain. Producers usually do not enjoy the economies of scale that they have in production, when it comes to providing distributional services (Rosenbloom 2007) and this creates a space for wholesalers or other intermediaries. Even though recent developments in the distributional channel indicate that traditional wholesaling activities now also compete with other supply chain organizations, wholesaling still remains an important activity in many economies (Quinn and Sparks, 2007). In 2010, the Swedish wholesale trade sector consisted of approximately 46.000 firms and generated an annual turnover of 1 300 billion SEK (Företagsstatistiken, Statistics Sweden). In terms of turnover, wholesaling accounts for 20% of the gross domestic product and is thereby the third largest industry. This is behind manufacturing and a composite group of firms in other sectors of the service industry but ahead of retailing. This indicates that the wholesale trade sector is an important part of the Swedish economy. The position of wholesaling is further reinforced when measuring productivity growth. Measured in terms of value added per employee, wholesaling experienced the largest productivity growth of all industries in the Swedish economy during the years 2000 through 2010. The fact that wholesale trade is one of the important parts of a modern economy, and the positive development of the Swedish wholesale trade sector in recent decades, leads to several questions related to industry dynamics. The three topics that will be examined in this thesis are firm entry, firm relocation and firm growth. The main question to be answered by this thesis is what factors influence new firm formation, firm relocation and firm growth in the Swedish wholesale trade sector?