Lars Persson

We examine how taxation of intergenerational transfers affects the allocation of productive assets within family firms. Using administrative registry data on family-farm successions in Sweden around the 2005 abolition of inheritance and gift taxes, we investigate how the successor's share of land holdings in the parental and sibling generation responds to the removal of taxes. We use a quasi-experimental event-study design and find that the increase in the successor's ownership share is about 10-11 percentage points larger among families with greater predetermined exposure to the pre-reform inheritance tax. Results also indicate that the reform led parents to transfer assets earlier and concentrate a larger share of productive assets in the successor through inter vivos gifts. Post-reform successions are associated with higher capital intensity, suggesting that inheritance and gift taxation extends beyond the direct tax burden, affecting property-right allocation and capital intensity in family-operated enterprises.

Europe has recently faced significant instability due to the war in Ukraine, which has increased energy price volatility and heightened insecurity in energy supply. With solar power and energy storage emerging as vital components of future energy markets, this study investigates the role of energy self-sufficiency and sharing in shaping household preferences for adopting solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Using data from a discrete choice experiment of Swedish non-solar homeowners, we assess how households value these non-economic aspects of solar PV investments and how attitudes toward the geopolitical situation influence adoption preferences. A five-class latent class model identifies energy self-sufficiency as an important driver of solar PV adoption. In classes where attribute coefficients are significant, the coefficient for energy sharing exceeds that for one-hour storage, suggesting that when storage capacity is perceived as insufficient, respondents prefer to share energy surplus rather than to store it. Moreover, the findings indicate that respondents who are more concerned about geopolitics are more likely to prefer solar PV alternatives over not investing.

The value of lost load (VoLL) is a monetary metric quantifying the cost of unsupplied energy (€/kWh) during outages, providing valuable insights for policymakers, utility providers, and industrial stakeholders. Leveraging a mixed-method approach that integrates and compares survey data with publicly available microeconomic data insights, results show how value-added based measures significantly underestimate the financial impact of power outages. Shorter outages are found to be disproportionately costly, primarily due to high fixed costs associated with initial disruptions. Businesses report that the effects of a one-hour outage could linger for months, with some unable to fully recover even 12 months after the event. These extended disruptions underscore the enduring consequences of power outages, particularly for electricity-intensive industries. In a regression type of approach, the cost of power interruptions is not significantly influenced by the type of industry. Instead, the economic impact of an outage is more closely tied to the volume of electricity consumed, duration and annual production hours. Highlighting sectoral aspects and methodological sensitivities, the paper offers relevant insights for setting reliability standards, designing compensation schemes, and for guiding infrastructure investment.

The creation and scaling of startups are inherently linked to risk-taking, with various types of owners handling these risks differently. This paper investigates the influence of an active venture capital (VC) market on startups’ decisions regarding research and scaling. It outlines conditions under which VC-backed startups prefer riskier, yet potentially more rewarding strategies compared to independent startups. VC firms, by means of temporary ownership and compensation structures, introduce ”exit costs” that make high-risk strategies more attractive to VC-backed startups. Moreover, an active VC market prompts startups to undertake higher initial risks, as VC firms provide support for pivoting after setbacks. Additionally, the presence of VC intensifies research risk among established firms, as their research initiatives are strategic complements to the risk choices of startups.

The power system is undergoing a drastic transition towards a system with high degree of intermittency at the same time as the transition in other sectors will require more electricity. Taken together this will make it more challenging to keep the instantaneous balance between demand and supply in the power market with increasing risks of interruptions and power outages as a result. The objective of this study is to estimate the cost of power outages in the Swedish industrial sector by using firm- level, production data. Our estimates of interruption costs are based on firms’ actual behavior concerning their use of electricity and the values created. The main approach is complemented with a qualitative study based on a questionnaire targeting key-persons in a small number of industrial production facilities. The purpose with this is to identify firm or facility specific aspects that that are not revealed by annual firm level data. The main conclusion from this study is that the costs for the industry of supply interruptions are considerable, and seems to have increased over time, suggesting that the industrial sector has become more vulnerable to supply disturbances. In 2016 the estimated cost of a one-hour outage for an average industrial facility in Sweden was approximately 23 times larger than the value of the electricity not delivered (SEK 9502 versus SEK 400), whereas the cost in 2004 was approximately 13 times the market value of the electricity not delivered. However, there is substantial variation across firms and sectors. For an average facility in the electro and motor vehicle industry, for example, a one-hour cost is, according to our estimates, about 120 and 105 times the market value of the electricity not delivered, respectively (SEK 43680 versus SEK 415 for an average motor vehicle firm). In the pulp and paper industry, on the other hand, the outage cost is only about 5 times the value of undelivered electricity in spite of a relatively high outage cost in absolute value (SEK 27730). The reason for the relative low ratio for the pulp and paper industry is the very high level of electricity intensity. The estimated costs should however be interpreted with care since they are based on the assumption that the interruption in production processes corresponds exactly to the duration of the outage, but also that the production losses during the outage are lost forever and cannot be compensated for in any way. Importantly, according to the results from our survey most firms or production facilities reported that the production interruption becomes noticeable longer than the power outage itself. In addition, most of them reported additional costs because of an outage, such as costs for overtime and delivery delays. On the other hand, several facilities firms reported that they may be able to “take back” the production losses during a year. Altogether, the first effects seem to dominate according to the survey results and the cost estimates reported should therefore be interpreted as lower bounds.

This paper proposes a theory of gazelle growth in which gazelles can either grow organically or by acquisitions. In the model, there are three types of firms: incumbent, target, and gazelle. We show that the lower cost of organic growth can increase the incentives for acquisition growth. The reason for this is that the incumbent understands that if it acquires the target firm, the gazelle will then invest organically anyway to grow, and therefore, the acquisition will not be sufficient to protect the incumbent's market power. The gazelle could then acquire the target firm at a good price. We also show that financial support for the organic growth of gazelles can increase gazelles' growth by acquisitions since incumbents' preemptive motives are reduced.

In this paper we investigate if a pro-environmental framing influences households' stated willingness to accept restrictions on their electricity use. We use a split-sample choice experiment (CE) and ask respondents to choose between their current electricity contract and hypothetical contracts featuring various load controls and a monetary compensation. Our results indicate that the pro-environmental framing have little impact on the respondents' choices. We observe a significant framing eeffect on choices and marginal willingness-to-accept (MWTA) for only a few contract attributes. The results further suggest that there is no significant framing effect among households that engage in different pro-environmental activities.

Internet panels are increasingly used for stated preference research, and members of such panels receive compensation for each completed survey. One concern is that over time this creates professional respondents who answer surveys to receive the monetary compensation. We identify professional respondents using data on panel tenure, survey response frequency, completion rates and total number of completed surveys. We find evidence of two types of professional respondents: "hyperactives" who answer surveys frequently and "experienced" who have long panel tenure and a large number of completed surveys. Using an integrated choice and latent variable model in a stated preference survey, we find that "hyperactive" respondents are less likely to choose the 'status quo' and have a more stochastic choice process as seen from the econometrician's point of view, whereas "experienced" respondents have a relatively more deterministic choice process. Our results show that "hyperactive" respondents significantly impact estimated values.

When and how do entrepreneurs sell their inventions? To address this issue, we develop an endogenous entry-sale asymmetric information oligopoly model. We show that lowquality inventions are sold directly or used for entry. Inventors who sell post-entry use entry to credibly reveal information on quality. Incumbents are then willing to pay high prices for high-quality inventions to preempt rivals from obtaining them. Using Swedish data on patents granted to small firms and individuals, we find evidence that high-quality inventions are sold under preemptive bidding competition, post entry.