Bo Sandelin

Property crimes and the police: an empirical analysis of Swedish data

The results of a study of the impact of police work on property crimes are reported. The data base is a cross-section of 278 Swedish municipalities during the years 1975 and 1976. A three-equation simultaneous model is compared with a simpler two-equation model. The results indicate that the simpler system is preferable. In the estimates of both models, most parameters are significant with the expected signs. Police work seems to deter crime, as expected.

The De-Germanization of Swedish Economics

It is well known that the German influence on the discipline of economics was much greater a century ago than it is now. This is true not only of economics in Sweden, as the title of this essay suggests, but also of economics in the United States. As Joseph Dorfman (1955, 22) described in his pioneering article, the United States saw “an ever increasing number of college graduates [go] to Germany for advanced work in the [eighteen-] seventies and eighties.” The present situation is quite different, of course, and is reflected in the opening remarks by the editors of Kyklos in a recent special issue titled “Is There a European Economics?”: “Today, academic economics is strongly dominated by North American scholars which is reflected by publications, citations and also by Nobel Prizes” (Frey and Frey 1995).1 What accounts for the decline in the German influence? To answer that question, we begin by briefly touching upon the attitudes of the most influential Swedish economists, starting with the founders of modern economics in Sweden, among whom were the rather German-oriented David Davidson and Knut Wicksell, who were active at the beginning of the twentieth century; we compare them with the quite “de-Germanized”

Wicksell versus Brisman: A Dispute on Capital between Generations

Abstract After Wicksell had published the second Swedish edition of his Lectures on Political Economy in 1911, a debate began in the Ekonomisk Tidskrift between Wicksell and his opponent Sven Brisman. The controversy was mainly about the concept of capital and the rate of interest, but the circumstances around the debate are at least as interesting as the theoretical issues. Wicksell had long been an internationally famous professor, while his opponent was a young and impetuous docent. Wicksell was a theorist, while Brisman was an empiricist. Those facts determined the character of the debate.

Qualitative Response Estimations of the Selling Behaviour in the Swedish Market for Owner-Occupied Houses

The probability that a household will sell its house in a specific year is assumed to be a function of, principally, changes in the characteristics of the household subsequent to purchase. Probit models are estimated from Swedish register data. Leads and lags in the behaviour of the households are introduced. The empirical results indicate that changes in the characteristics of the households do matter. A decrease in income seems to enhance the probability of selling more than an increase in income of the same magnitude. Leads equations exhibit at least as good fit as lags equations. The significance of leads appear to be attached mainly to changes in income while there is a weak indication that lags might be more important concerning the influence of changes in the number of children.

Realized supply of owner‐occupied houses in Sweden An exploratory study ∗

The probability of selling owner‐occupied houses in Sweden is studied. It is assumed that while there is a functional relationship between the level of characteristics of the household and, on the other side, the households demand for housing, there is a functional relationship between changes in such characteristics and the probability of selling. Different variants of a linear probability model are estimated. The data are taken from official registers. According to our estimates a decrease in real disposable income since the year of purchase adds more to the probability of selling than an increase of the same magnitude. There is also an indication, although not unequivocal, that an increase in the number of children means more than a corresponding decrease. Divorce seems to add more to the selling probability than death of the spouse, marriage, or separation without formal divorce. In all equations, however, the estimated intercept is rather large and contributes about three quarters to the mean value ...