Browsing by Author "Eriksson, John"

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Local Employment Effects of Falling Copper prices: A Case study in the Copperbelt province of Zambia.
(2017-11-23) Davidsson, Jakob; Eriksson, John; University of Gothenburg/Department of Economics; Göteborgs universitet/Institutionen för nationalekonomi med statistik
Zambia is heavily dependent on copper, and a typical example of a country subject to the natural resource curse. From 2011 until 2016, the copper price fell from around $9,900 to $5,660 per metric tonne (mt). In this thesis, we examine the relationship between the falling copper price and employment opportunities in the Copperbelt region of Zambia, both in the large mines and further down the supply chain, among the Zambian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) active in the Copperbelt. We use regression analysis on panel-type employment data and questionnaire data, self-collected during a field study in April and May of 2017. We also use graphical visualisation of employment data and anecdotal evidence from interviews for contextual understanding and framing of our regression result interpretation. We find that the falling copper price reduces employment in the mines, and that the effect seems to be stronger for contract-style employees than permanently employed labourers. SMEs who have a larger share of mining clients are more likely to have reduced profits since the start of the copper price fall, but all SMEs across the Copperbelt have generally felt a downturn in their business. There seems to be a critical price point of around $4,000 to $5,000 per mt of copper when the employment starts to drop rapidly.
Naturalization and Social Capital Investment- Evidence from 32 European Countries
(2019-07-02) Eriksson, John; Svensson, Oscar; University of Gothenburg/Graduate School; Göteborgs universitet/Graduate School
In times of increased migration, knowledge about how to best integrate migrants is crucial. In this paper, we investigate whether citizenship can facilitate integra-tion by increasing investment into social capital. The question is of interest as social cohesion and social capital investment are key determinants of economic growth. Us-ing data from the European Social Survey, we investigate the relationship between citizenship and several social capital investment measures with a Linear Probability model, a Two-stage Least Squares and a Bivariate Probit model. For exogenous variation in citizenship, we create an instrument based on variation in whether the country of origin allows their migrants to acquire dual citizenship. The results are mixed. In the naive linear model we ﬁnd a positive relationship, but the results are not robust to instrumental variable models that deal with selection into citizenship. Policy makers should not put too much faith in potential positive eﬀects of natu-ralization on social integration.