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This thesis investigates how institutional differences across European countries shape the relationship between corporate financialization, GDP per capita, and median incomes. Drawing on panel data from 23 European countries between 2005 and 2023, the study employs fixed-effects regression models to examine how changes in portfolio income, shareholder payout, and financial assets among non-financi
HYBRIT is often presented as a flagship project in Sweden’s transition to fossil-free industry, but its implementation depends on systems that the project itself does not control: electricity supply, transport infrastructure, and environmental permitting. This thesis examines how the Swedish state identifies and responds to structural tensions in the implementation of HYBRIT and fossil-free steel
This thesis provides macro-level evidence that finance has a positive effect on innovation across high- income OECD countries from 1996 to 2022. Building on the existing literature, it examines the different effects of bank-based and market-based financing on innovation. Instead of using static financial indicators that capture the size of the financial system, this thesis uses measures that captu
This thesis examines the role of credit allocation in China’s growth model. Based on the ‘Quantity Theory of Disaggregated Credit’, it focuses on how the growth in different types of bank credit is associated with GDP growth and its components. By making use of a disaggregated credit dataset from 2008 up to 2025, this thesis finds that both household and enterprise credit have a positive relations
This thesis investigates the early labour-market response to the investment waves announced in 2021 and 2023 by Novo Nordisk, aimed at expanding its production capabilities in Kalundborg, Denmark. We use municipal-level register data on employment, commuting, unemployment, economic activity and migration from Danmarks Statistik, comparing conditions prior to the investment waves with labour-market
This thesis investigates the early labour-market response to the investment waves announced in 2021 and 2023 by Novo Nordisk, aimed at expanding its production capabilities in Kalundborg, Denmark. We use municipal-level register data on employment, commuting, unemployment, economic activity and migration from Danmarks Statistik, comparing conditions prior to the investment waves with labour-market
The introduction of renewable energy into our energy markets has fundamentally changed the way energy markets behave. Within the current literature, there is a significant gap of information on how these new energy markets' shape regional price volatility. Using panel data from the four Swedish electricity price areas (SE1–SE4) over the period 2021–2025, this study combines GARCH volatility mo
Cash persists at a large scale in Germany despite having the necessary conditions to displace cash as has been observed in other high-income countries. This thesis examines why cash persists at the levels it has by applying network effects theory to the German payment market through a qualitative single case study. Two hypotheses are derived from the theory and are then tested through secondary da
This thesis investigated whether including binding financial commitments in an integrated blue economy policy programme yields measurably different outcomes compared to an otherwise similar unfinanced framework. The Seychelles and the Bahamas adopted comparable whole-of-government frameworks within three years of each other, differing most clearly in financing architecture: Seychelles embedded bin
Despite relatively high levels of basic water service coverage and constitutional recognition of water as a human right, Ecuador continues to face major challenges in safely managed water, wastewater treatment, and gastrointestinal disease burden. This thesis examines whether improvements in municipal water governance are associated with reductions in gastrointestinal hospitalization rates across
This paper examines whether Greenland’s annual block grant from Denmark has generated Dutch Disease effects. The foundational framework of Corden & Neary (1982) is applied to the context of aid-induces and public-sector driven transfer dependency. Using a comparative most-similar-systems design, including Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark, the analysis combines a descriptive diagnostic
This thesis empirically investigates the relationship between financialization and real capital accumulation in Swedish non-financial corporations (NFCs) from 2000 to 2024. Utilizing a Two-Way Fixed Effects regression model on firm-level panel data from the Serrano database, the study isolates the impacts of financial engagement on real investments across different firm sizes. The findings reveal
This thesis explores the role of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that include environmental provisions addressing non-tariff barriers and regulatory heterogeneity in shaping bilateral trade patterns in environmental goods. By combining trade data for 199 countries in 2002--2020 with an OECD classification of environmental goods and detailed data on PTA content, the empirical analysis estimate
This paper examines the relationship between financial inclusion and financial stability using panel data analysis with fixed effects estimations alongside an instrumental variable approach to reveal causal links. The study focuses on 18 Sub-Saharan African countries whose financial inclusivity has in some form been affected and driven by mobile money technology, and is captured from the years 200
This thesis examines whether communist collectivization intensity in 1969 is associated with agricultural land inequality in Romania today. Using county-level data for all 41 Romanian județe, I document a positive association between the share of land in collective and state farms in 1969 and the share of utilized agricultural area in farms of 50 hectares or more in 2020. The association predates
ASEAN implemented AANZFTA, a new free trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand, in 2010. Previous studies find mixed and mostly insignificant results on trade increases following AANZFTA. Due to the increased interest in the effects of FTAs on outcomes besides gross trade, this paper analyses value added trade, employment embodied in trade and foreign direct investment using a gravity model.
This thesis examines whether Guarnieri and Rainer's (2021) finding that British colonial rule increased intimate partner violence through male backlash in Cameroon generalises to other Anglo-French colonial borders. Using a regression discontinuity design exploiting the arbitrary placement of the Ghana-Togo border and data from four Demographic and Health Survey rounds, the thesis estimates th
This thesis examines whether U.S. Official Development Assistance (ODA) reinforces recipient countries’ economic dependence on the United States. It constructs a novel Economic Dependence Index (EDI) combining bilateral trade and financial dependence on the United States and applies fixed-effects panel regressions on 75 developing countries over 2009-2024. The results show that higher U.S. aid sha
This thesis examines how cross-border electricity interconnectors affect price formation and market integration, using the Norwegian electricity market as a case study. The focus is on NordLink and North Sea Link, which in 2020 and 2021 respectively, connected Southern Norway’s NO2 bidding zone more directly to Germany/Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. The central question is whether these interc
This study investigates whether cultural risk preferences moderate the relationship between macroeconomic shocks — namely inflation, unemployment, and GDP contraction — and fertility across 76 developed and developing countries over the period 2000–2023. Drawing on the Becker–Tomes quantity–quality framework extended with a precautionary saving channel, I argue that more risk-averse societies trea
