We use a youth payroll tax cut in Sweden to investigate whether retail firms that were exposed to substantial labor cost savings increased employment of minimum wage workers more than firms that received smaller labor cost savings. Our dataset includes information on both contracted wages and...

Hiring new employees is an important part of a new venture's growth. However, we still have limited understanding of the human capital needs of high-growth new ventures, and how their pace of growth relates to whom they hire. We contribute to the literature by investigating 64,404 hires among...

It is frequently argued that policymakers should target high-tech firms, i.e., firms with high R&D intensity, because such firms are considered more innovative and therefore potential fast-growers. This argument relies on the assumption that the association among high-tech status, innovativeness...

The number of refugees in Europe has increased dramatically in recent years, and many countries are facing great challenges to integrating these refugees into their societies. A small group of high-growth firms have at the same time attracted attention because they create the most new jobs at...

We use the entry of 17 external shopping malls in Sweden to investigate how they have affected the performance of incumbent firms located in the city centres of small cities. We find that entry by external shopping malls decreased labour productivity for incumbent firms in city centres by...

In the race to the South Pole, Roald Amundsen's expedition covered an equal distance each day, irrespective of weather conditions, while Scott's pace was erratic. Amundsen won the race and returned without loss of life, while Scott and his men died. We investigate how firms' sales growth deviate...

Most previous studies on the employment effects of government R&D grants targeting SMEs are characterized by data-, measurement-, and selection problems, making it difficult to construct a relevant control group of firms that did not receive a R&D grant. We investigate the effects on employment...

Business improvement districts (BIDs) have emerged as possible solutions for the revitalization of urban areas characterized by economic decline. Using a difference-in differences model, we investigate the effects of a voluntary Swedish BID programme in five cities on firm performance, urban...

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish between the determinants of new start-ups and in migration of firms using a data-set that covers 13,471 limited liability firms in the Swedish wholesale trade industries during the period 2000- 2004. Our results indicate that the presence of a...

IKEA is one of the world’s largest retailers, but little is known about how IKEA impact incumbent retailers when deciding to enter a local market. Previous studies on the effects of big-box entry on surrounding retailers have also generated inconclusive results, and mainly been focused towards...