Stockholm School of Economics

About: Stockholm School of Economics is a education organization based out in Stockholm, Sweden. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Cost effectiveness. The organization has 1186 authors who have published 4891 publications receiving 285543 citations. The organization is also known as: Stockholm Business School & Handelshögskolan i Stockholm.

Do People Care About Social Context? Framing Effects in Dictator Games

Abstract: Many previous experiments document that behavior in multi-person settings responds to the name of the game and the labeling of strategies. Usually these studies cannot tell whether frames affect preferences or beliefs. In this Dictator game study, we investigate whether social framing effects are also present when only one of the subjects makes a decision, in which case the frame may only affect preferences. We find that behavior is insensitive to social framing.

Economic evaluation of pharmaceuticals: a European perspective.

Abstract: In recent years there has been a large increase in the number of economic evaluations of pharmaceuticals. Many of these studies have been commissioned by individual pharmaceutical companies, in support of new or existing products. In 2 countries, Australia and Canada (in the province of Ontario), draft guidelines issued by the government have outlined the requirements for economic evaluations to be submitted in support of requests for reimbursement (government subsidy) of particular products. One consequence of the guidelines is that they clarify what is required, and in specifying the procedure for submission of dossiers, identify a clear audience for the economic evaluation. In contrast, the situation in Europe is diverse. A wide range of healthcare systems exist, including national health services and more liberal systems, involving a wide range of insurers and providers. European countries also differ widely in their approach to the pricing and reimbursement of pharmaceuticals. Because of this diversity, the nature, conduct and impact of economic evaluation in Europe is not clear. It is therefore difficult for pharmaceutical companies to develop appropriate strategies for economic evaluation and for analysts to decide on appropriate study methodology. This article reviews the nature of any official guidance or requirements for economic evaluation, the potential for use of economic evaluation, the range of studies carried out and the identifiable impacts. There is currently no official guidance in any country, although some countries are considering issuing guidelines. In some countries there is official encouragement to pharmaceutical companies to undertake studies, and where economic data have been presented they have been considered by the relevant committees. The potential uses of economic evaluation vary widely from country to country. These can be classified in terms of a potential role in undertaking national price negotiations, deciding on reimbursement status or copayment level, deciding on inclusion in local formularies or in treatment guidelines, or in improving prescribing decisions. Approximately 80 economic evaluations of pharmaceutical products have been conducted to date in Europe, covering a wide range of clinical areas. There are relatively few examples of identifiable effects of such studies. In part this is because it is often difficult to assess the part played by various items of data. Nevertheless, the overriding conclusion is that economic evaluation of medicines is likely to be more relevant in Europe in the future. The problem for the pharmaceutical industry is in determining when and how.

Labour Mobility in Construction: European Implications of the Laval un Partneri Dispute with Swedish Labour

Abstract: The accession to the European Union of new member states from central and eastern Europe, with weak trade union movements, poorly developed social dialogue and inferior working conditions, has been viewed as a threat to regulated labour standards in the EU-15. This article examines a high-profile labour dispute arising from the conditions of Latvian construction contract labour in Sweden. The dispute exposes weaknesses in the protective floor of minimum standards offered by the posted workers Directive. It also goes to the core of the debate about the preservation of a ‘European social model’ and the proposed Services Directive.

Molecular genetics and subjective well-being

Abstract: Subjective well-being (SWB) is a major topic of research across the social sciences. Twin and family studies have found that genetic factors may account for as much as 30-40% of the variance in SWB. Here, we study genetic contributions to SWB in a pooled sample of ≈11,500 unrelated, comprehensively-genotyped Swedish and Dutch individuals. We apply a recently developed method to estimate "common narrow heritability": the fraction of variance in SWB that can be explained by the cumulative additive effects of genetic polymorphisms that are common in the population. Our estimates are 5-10% for single-question survey measures of SWB, and 12-18% after correction for measurement error in the SWB measures. Our results suggest guarded optimism about the prospects of using genetic data in SWB research because, although the common narrow heritability is not large, the polymorphisms that contribute to it could feasibly be discovered with a sufficiently large sample of individuals.

Testing for volatility interactions in the Constant Conditional Correlation GARCH model

Abstract: This thesis consists of four research papers. The main focus is on building the multivariate Conditional Correlation (CC-) GARCH models. In particular, emphasis lies on considering an extension of CC-GARCH models that allow for interactions or causality in conditional variances. In the first three chapters, misspecification testing and parameter restrictions in these models are discussed. In the final chapter, a computer package for building major variants of the CC-GARCH models is presented.The first chapter contains a brief introduction to the CC-GARCH models as well as a summary of each research paper. The second chapter proposes a misspecification test for modelling of the conditional variance part of the Extended Constant CC-GARCH model. The test is designed for testing the hypothesis of no interactions in the conditional variances. If the null hypothesis is true, then the conditional variances may be described by the standard CCC-GARCH model. The test is constructed on the Lagrange Multiplier (LM) principle that only requires the estimation of the null model. Although the test is derived under the assumption of the constant conditional correlation, the simulation experiments suggest that the test is also applicable to building CC-GARCH models with changing conditional correlations. There is no asymptotic theory available for these models, which is why simulation of the test statistic in this situation has been necessary.The third chapter provides yet another misspecification test for modelling of the conditional variance component of the CC-GARCH models, whose parameters are often estimated in two steps. The estimator obtained through these two steps is a two-stage quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (2SQMLE). Taking advantage of the asymptotic results for 2SQMLE, the test considered in this chapter is formulated using the LM principle, which requires only the estimation of univariate GARCH models. It is also shown that the test statistic may be computed by using an auxiliary regression. A robust version of the new test is available through another auxiliary regression. All of this amounts to a substantial simplification in computations compared with the test proposed in the second chapter. The simulation experiments show that, under both under both Gaussian and leptokurtic innovations, as well as under changing conditional correlations, the new test has reasonable size and power properties.When modelling the conditional variance, it is necessary to keep the sequence of conditional covariance matrices positive definite almost surely for any time horizon. In the fourth chapter it is demonstrated that under certain conditions some of the parameters of the model can take negative values while the conditional covariance matrix remains positive definite almost surely. It is also shown that even in the simplest first-order vector GARCH representation, the relevant parameter space can contain negative values for some parameters, which is not possible in the univariate model. This finding makes it possible to incorporate negative volatility spillovers into the CC-GARCH framework.Many new GARCH models and misspecification testing procedures have been recently proposed in the literature. When it comes to applying these models or tests, however, there do not seem to exist many options for the users to choose from other than creating their own computer programmes. This is especially the case when one wants to apply a multivariate GARCH model. The last chapter of the thesis offers a remedy to this situation by providing a workable environment for building CC-GARCH models. The package is open source, freely available on the Internet, and designed for use in the open source statistical environment R. With this package can estimate major variants of CC-GARCH models as well as simulate data from the CC-GARCH data generating processes with multivariate normal or Student's t innovations. In addition, the package is equipped with the necessary functions for conducting diagnostic tests such as those discussed in the third chapter of this thesis.