This thesis consists of five papers, four of them basically concerning environmental issues, while the fifth paper addresses the issue of measuring output from the educational sector. <p> The first paper starts from the fact that industrial activity causes environmental damage. Therefore, public...</p>

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a procedure to empirically test the Porter hypothesis. This hypothesis argues that environmental regulation not only increases environmental quality, but also brings the polluting producers information that makes them more resource efficient, as well as...

This paper studies how the possibility to postpone the unrecoverable entry and location cost affects regional entry when post-entry earnings are uncertain. We find that the opportunity cost to enter today is higher when entering a region with high uncertainty relative to a region with low...

The purpose of this paper is to compute and evaluate producers’ marginal abatement costs (MACs). These costs are obtained by calculating shadow prices of bad outputs from the production technology, which is represented by the estimated directional output distance function. To be more specific,...

In this paper we specify and estimate a dynamic factor demand model for the Swedish pulp industry. Firms are assumed to have rational expectations and costs of adjustment will arise when the capital stock is altered. The estimates are based on plant level panel data for the period 1972-1990. We...

Under the Kyoto Protocol the European Union (EU) agreed to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases by 8 percent in comparison with the level in 1990. The Burden-Sharing Agreement (BSA) further redistributes the overall 8 percent reduction target among the EU Member States. The purpose of this...

This thesis consists of an introductory part and three papers. <p> Paper [I] examines how taxes affect consumption of commodities that are detrimental to health and the environment. Specifically, this paper examines if a tax increase leads to a significantly larger change in consumption than a...</p>

This thesis consists of four self-contained papers related to energy demand and household cooking energy.<p> Paper [I] examine the impact of price, income and non-economic factors on gasoline demand using a structural time series model. The results indicated that non-economic factors did have an...</p>

Using a unique and highly detailed data set on energy consumption at the appliance-level for 200 Swedish households, seemingly unrelated regression (SUR)-based end-use specific load curves are estimated. The estimated load curves are then used to explore possible restrictions on load shifting...

The thesis consists of a summary and four papers, concerned with food consumption, behavior associated with overconsumption of food and analysis of the economic policy reforms designed to improve health. <p> Paper [I] estimates a hedonic price model on breakfast cereal, crisp bread and potato...</p>