Walter Korpi argues in a previous issue of Challenge (March/April 2000) that Swedish economists' claim that Sweden's growth performance has been inferior to that of other industrialized countries is at odds with the facts. Since Sweden has not grown slowly relative to other countries, there is...

Guided by a simple theory of task assignment and time allocation, we investigate the long run response to national differences in tax rates on labor income, payrolls and consumption. The theory implies that higher tax rates reduce work time in the market sector, increase the size of the shadow...

What national policies are most efficient in promoting the commercialization of university-generated knowledge? We address this question by characterizing and evaluating the policy pursued in Sweden and the US, two countries that put a great deal of resources into university R&D, but follow very...

This paper examines the relation between prices in conventional stores and on the Internet. Main results from the theoretical analysis are i) we expect a discrete fall in prices in conventional stores as the share of the population with access to Internet reaches a critical level, ii) the...

The recent 'scientification' of commercial technology has brought the interface between universities and industry into sharp focus. In particular, academic entrepreneurship, i.e., the variety of ways in which academics take direct part in the commercialization of research, is widely discussed....

Using data from 17 countries that have suffered a currency crisis, this paper studies firm-level leverage and performance measures before and after a crisis has occurred. We show that in the years preceding a currency crisis, companies that are expected to benefit from currency depreciations...