This comprehensive Handbook presents thoughtful analysis on how regulations can impact innovation within a number of fields and markets, and provides a greater understanding of regulatory complexity and the challenging task it presents for future research. The Handbook of Innovation and Regulation embraces some of the key policy areas such as the regulation of markets, critical sectors, and global and regional aspects, focussing particularly on those regulations which target innovation. Reviewing these often interconnected policy areas in terms of both macroeconomic and microeconomic issues, this Handbook expertly studies how regulations in differing fields can affect innovative activities. By placing innovation centre stage, the contributors emphasise the direct and indirect effects of imposed regulations. Further, they illustrate the critically important overall impact of innovation to make firms competitive, promote economic growth and increase societal welfare. Addressing research and policy challenges, this Handbook would be an excellent resource for academics in regulatory economics, innovation and entrepreneurship, international trade, regional economics as well as environment and digitisation and policymakers in both national and international organisations.

It is well established that there is uneven availability of credit across space, in particular for SMEs. The evidence on whether this translates into differences in actual business investments remains scarce. We assess this question by using firm-level data for Swedish firms and estimate the extent to which the average investment-cash flow sensitivities of firms vary across the urban–rural hierarchy. We find that the world of financing is not yet flat for the majority of Swedish SMEs. Companies located in non-metro regions are most dependent on own cash flow in their investments. The results hold for all firms, firms of different sizes, firms operating in low-end services, unaffiliated firms and those belonging to domestic corporations. In contrast, investment-cash flow sensitivity of firms operating in high-tech services and those belonging to a multinational enterprise does not differ geographically. On average, regional investment-cash flow sensitivity is lower in bigger, denser and more educated local labour market regions; it is higher in regions with greater concentration of SMEs.

Wage employment is the most commonly observed type of employment after a spell of entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of having been an entrepreneur on earnings after individuals exit. The question is how the entrepreneurship spell influences their value in the labor market? Based on a theoretical framework and earlier literature, our specific interest lies in how these outcomes interact with education level and the nature of the entrepreneurial venture. To investigate this question, we use longitudinal register data on firms and individuals in Sweden. The empirical strategy builds on matching techniques and estimations of earnings equations in a difference-in-differences framework with heterogenous treatment years. We provide evidence that there exists an earnings penalty when highly educated entrepreneurs return to wage employment. This effect is persistent throughout the time period that we observe. For individuals with lower educational attainment, we find no or weak evidence of a wage penalty. Our results suggest that the wage penalty for highly educated individuals operates through the depreciation of specific specialized skills valuable in wage employment.

Från förordet: Årets rapport kartlägger det svenska entreprenörskapets utveckling under en turbulent tid präglad av pandemi, restriktioner och nedstängningar av hela samhällen vilket du kan läsa om i kapitel två. Trots pandemin ökar svenskt entreprenörskap under 2021 till nio procent (TEA) vilket är den högsta siffran som redovisats i GEM-projektet för Sveriges del sedan 2010. En minst sagt glädjande siffra.

Det är emellertid inte en anledning att luta sig tillbaka. Världen står inför stora utmaningar i form av komponentbrist, störningar i leveranskedjor samt en oroande geopolitisk situation, inte minst i och med Rysslands invasion av Ukraina. Därtill kan tilläggas att Sverige dras med olösta och kända problem som till exempel en dysfunktionell arbetsmarknad präglad av kompetensbrist kombinerat med hög arbetslöshet och låg självförsörjningsgrad bland stora delar av befolkningen.

I årets rapport görs även nedslag i entreprenörernas relation till miljömässig- och social hållbarhet. Svenska entreprenörer uppvisar på intet sätt det största engagemanget för bland annat miljömässig hållbarhet globalt sett. Men det finns anledning att tro att det åtminstone delvis kan bero på att företagare i Sverige ställer högre krav inom sin verksamhet, speciellt jämfört med företagare i utvecklingsländer.

This year Swedish Economic Forum Report examines industrial policy. Over the 20th century industrial policy has been used for promoting economic development in both advanced industrialized countries as well as in developing countries. However, there is no real consensus as to what industrial policy encompasses orhow effective it is for achieving economic development. In recent years, geopolitical and geoeconomic considerations have spurred a renewed interest and advocacy for the use of industrial policy.

In the report we assess this new interest for industrial policy from a Swedish and international perspective. The various chapters in the report describes experiences and impacts of conducting industrial policies in Sweden, UK, Germany, and China. The chapters address different theoretical and empirical perspectives of industrial policies.

We present a modified version of the entrepreneurial choice model, where it is shown that the expected utility of becoming an entrepreneur is decreasing in both the levels of taxes and the tax administrative burden. We extend previous empirical findings by examining how these variables influence entrepreneurs at different stages in the entrepreneurial life cycle. Our findings imply that the effect of the tax administrative burden varies over the entrepreneurial life cycle from strongly negative to insignificant. The most pronounced negative effects appear in the early stages of entrepreneurship. We conclude that a 10% reduction in the tax administrative burden increases the propensity for new business establishments by 4%. Our findings support the idea that tax simplification is one way to encourage entrepreneurship, without any reduction in tax revenues.

Baksidestext: Entreprenörskap medför fler arbetstillfällen, ökat välstånd och nya varor och tjänster som underlättar vardagen för alla. Dessvärre dras Sverige med en rad strukturella problem som hindrar ekonomisk utveckling, bland annat saknar en stor grupp människor i dagsläget självförsörjning genom arbete. Samtidigt har arbetsgivare svårt att hitta personal med rätt kompetens. Dessutom skapar regleringar och skatter barriärer som hindrar företag att anställa. Vilka reformer krävs för att påskynda den ekonomiska återstarten efter pandemin och lägga grunden för framtida svenskt välstånd?

I rapporten Återstart, lägre arbetslöshet och högre självförsörjningsgrad – Vilka hinder ser företagen för att anställa? går författarna igenom angelägna ekonomipolitiska reformområden och lämnar policyförslag som kan lägga grunden till fortsatt svenskt välstånd.