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.

An empirical test of the gravity p-median model

A customer is presumed to gravitate to a facility by the distance to it and the attractiveness of it. However regarding the location of the facility, the presumption is that the customer opts for the shortest route to the nearest facility.This paradox was recently solved by the introduction of the gravity p-median model. The model is yet to be implemented and tested empirically. We implemented the model in an empirical problem of locating locksmiths, vehicle inspections, and retail stores ofv ehicle spare-parts, and we compared the solutions with those of the p-median model. We found the gravity p-median model to be of limited use for the problem of locating facilities as it either gives solutions similar to the p-median model, or it gives unstable solutions due to a non-concave objective function.

Distance measure and the p-median problem in rural areas

The p-median model is used to locate P facilities to serve a geographically distributed population. Conventionally, it is assumed that the population patronize the nearest facility and that the distance between the resident and the facility may be measured by the Euclidean distance. Carling, Han, and Håkansson (2012) compared two network distances with the Euclidean in a rural region witha sparse, heterogeneous network and a non-symmetric distribution of thepopulation. For a coarse network and P small, they found, in contrast to the literature, the Euclidean distance to be problematic. In this paper we extend their work by use of a refined network and study systematically the case when P is of varying size (2-100 facilities). We find that the network distance give as gooda solution as the travel-time network. The Euclidean distance gives solutions some 2-7 per cent worse than the network distances, and the solutions deteriorate with increasing P. Our conclusions extend to intra-urban location problems.

The effects of taxing truck distance on CO2 emissions from transports in retailing

To finance transportation infrastructure and to address social and environmental negative externalities of road transports, several countries have recently introduced or consider a distance based tax on trucks. In the competitive retail market such tax can be expected to lower the demand and thereby reduce CO2 emissions of road transports. However, as we show in this paper, such tax might also slow down the transition towards e-tailing. Considering that previous research indicates that a consumer switching from brick-and-mortar shopping to e-tailing reduces her CO2 emissions substantially, the direction and magnitude of the environmental net effect of the tax is unclear. In this paper, we assess the net effect in a Swedish regional retail market where the tax not yet is in place. We predict the net effect on CO2 emissions to be positive, but off-set by about 50% because of a slower transition to e-tailing.

The program and treatment effect of summer jobs on girls’ post-schooling incomes

Public programs (of disputed effect) offering summer jobs or work while in high school to smooth the transition from school to work is commonplace. In this paper, 1447 girls in their first grade of high school between 1997-2003 and randomly allotted summer jobs via a program in Falun (Sweden) are followed 5-12 years after graduation. The program led to a substantially larger accumulation of income while in high school. The causal effect of the high school income on post-schooling incomes was substantial and statistically significant. The implied elasticity of 0.4 is however potentially inflated dueto heterogeneous effects.

A finite sample improvement of the fixed effects estimator : applied to technical infficiency

The FE ('fixed effects') estimator of technical inefficiency performs poorly when N ('number of firms') is large and T ('number of time observations') is small. We propose estimators of both the firm effects and the inefficiencies, which have small sample gains compared to the traditional FE estimator. The estimators are based on nonparametric kernel regression of unordered variables, which includes the FE estimator as a special case. In terms of global conditional MSE ('mean square error') criterions, it is proved that there are kernel estimators which are efficient to the FE estimators of firm effects and inefficiencies, in finite samples. Monte Carlo simulations supports our theoretical findings and in an empirical example it is shown how the traditional FE estimator and the proposed kernel FE estimator lead to very different conclusions about inefficiency of Indonesian rice farmers.

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.

Growth and Inequality : A study of Swedish municipalities

This paper explores the relationship between the growth rate of the average income and income inequality using data at the municipal level in Sweden for the period 1992-2007. We estimate a fixed effects panel data growth model where the within-municipality income inequality is one of the explanatory variables. Different inequality measures (Gini coefficient, top income shares, and measures of inequality in the lower and upper ends of the income distribution) are also examined. We find a positive and significant relationship between income growth and income inequality, measured as the Gini coefficient and top income shares, respectively. In addition, while inequality at the upper end of the income distribution is positively associated with the income growth rate, inequality at the lower end of the income distribution seems to be negatively related to the growth rate. Our findings also suggest that increased income inequality enhances growth more in municipalities with a high level of average income than in those with a low level of average income.

CO2 Emissions, GDP and trade : a panel cointegration approach

This paper examines the relationships among per capita CO2 emissions, per capita GDP and international trade based on panel data sets spanning the period 1960-2008: one for 150 countries and the others for sub-samples comprising OECD and Non-OECD economies. We apply panel unit root and cointegration tests, and estimate a panel error correction model. The results from the error correction model suggest that there are long-term relationships between the variables for the whole sample and for Non-OECD countries. Finally, Granger causality tests show that there is bi-directional short-term causality between per capita GDP and international trade for the whole sample and between per capita GDP and CO2 emissions for OECD countries

Estimated lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden using time-to-event analysis

Maintenance planning of road pavement requires reliable estimates of roads’ lifetimes. In determining the lifetime of a road, this study combines maintenance activities and road condition measurements. The scope of the paper is to estimate lifetimes of road pavements in Sweden with time to event analysis. The model used includes effects of pavement type, road type, bearing capacity, road width, speed limit, stone size and climate zone, where the model is stratified according to traffic load. Among the nine analyzed pavement types, stone mastic had the longest expected lifetime, 32 percent longer than asphalt concrete. Among road types, ordinary roads with cable barriers had 30 percent shorter lifetime than ordinary roads. Increased speed lowered the lifetime, while increased stone size (up to 20 mm) and increased road width lengthened the lifetime. The results are of importance for life cycle cost analysis and road management.

Svenska Skidspelen 2012 : Förstudie kring ekonomisk effekt- och konsumtionsmätning inför Skid-VM i Falun 2015

Denna rapport ska ses som en förstudie kring metoder för insamling av information över besökarna vid Svenska Skidspelen samt för att uppskatta Skidspelens ekonomiska betydelse. Resultaten baseras på insamlat material via enkäter till besökare till Skidspelen 2012. Totalt 404 svar i enkätform från besökare inom området samt från bil och bussåkande besökare har använts i analysen. Därutöver intervjuades 718 besökare vid entrén om ålder, bostadsort, vistelselängd samt färdmedel till evenemanget.   Rapporten innehåller uppskattningar av Skidspelens ekonomiska betydelse med hjälp av flera typer av modeller; turism-, boende- samt ålderssegmenteringsmodell. Resultat från studien visar att engångs­kostnader för boende, resor och biljett kunde uppskattas relativt bra, medan konsumtion under dagen inte fångades tillräckligt bra i någon modell. Resultaten från studien visar också att en försiktig uppskattning av Skidspelens ekonomiska betydelse mätt som direkt konsumtion kan sägas ligga mellan 14 - 18 miljoner kr för år 2012.   För att få ett mer korrekt resultat vid eventuella vidare studier eller vid studier av Skid-VM 2015 i Falun så bör en samhällsekonomisk välfärds analys göras för att inkludera samtliga effekter. Beräkningen av Skidspelens ekonomiska effekt skulle kunna göras mer precis genom att tillfråga ett större urval av besökare samt utveckla insamlingen av data över besökarnas totala konsumtion kopplat till besöket vid Svenska Skidspelen. 

On processing GPS tracking data of car-movements in Borlänge, Sweden

The advancement of GPS technology enables GPS devices not only to be used as orientation and navigation tools, but also to track travelled routes. GPS tracking data provides essential information for a broad range of urban planning applications such as transportation routing and planning, traffic management and environmental control. This paper describes on processing the data that was collected by tracking the cars of 316 volunteers over a seven-week period. The detailed information is extracted. The processed data is further connected to the underlying road network by means of maps. Geographical maps are applied to check how the car-movements match the road network. The maps capture the complexity of the car-movements in the urban area. The results show that 90% of the trips on the plane match the road network within a tolerance.

Network density and the p-median solution

The p-medianmodel is commonly used to find optimal locations of facilities for geographically distributed demands. So far, there are few studies that have considered the importance of the road network in the model. However, Han, Håkansson, and Rebreyend (2013) examined the solutions of the p-median model with densities of the road network varying from 500 to 70,000 nodes. They found as the density went beyond some 10,000 nodes, solutions have no further improvements but gradually worsen. The aim of this study is to check their findings by using an alternative heuristic being vertex substitution, as a complement to their using simulated annealing. We reject the findings in Han et al (2013). The solutions do not further improve as the nodes exceed 10,000, but neither do the solutions deteriorate.