Browsing by Author "Sundsmyr, Staffan"

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    Aid Effectiveness on Living Standards - How Does Aid Affect Human Development Index HDI in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2013-08-07) Hammarstrand, Love; Sundsmyr, Staffan; University of Gothenburg/Department of Economics; Göteborgs universitet/Institutionen för nationalekonomi med statistik
    This study looks at whether aid affects Human Development Index (HDI), focusing on the geographical region of Sub-Saharan Africa. Aid effectiveness is often measured in economic growth, why we choose to see how aid affects the standards of living instead. Data on HDI have been collected from the HDRO, both from their database and their annual reports, while data on aid come from the OECD database DAC2a. We experienced the HDI definition changing over time as well as general data availability to be a problem. We performed two different econometric analyses, the first ranging between the years 1993-2007 and the second between the years 2005-2011. The study finds that the aggregate term for aid, ODA excluding debt, has a significant positive effect on the HDI of the aid recipient within the first year of receiving it. We also find evidence of effects of different aid variables that are lagged 1-3 years. These are humanitarian aid and technical cooperation as well as ODA excluding debt. The coefficients of these lagged variables vary between positive and negative, showing differences in the effect of different types of aid as well as differing effects over time. Our findings suggest that the overall effect of aid is positive. We recommend further research on a country-specific level as well as adding corruption as a further influence.
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    Nudging people off of the couch. A nudge experiment on physical exercise in collaboration with SATS.
    (2017-07-28) Goffe, Anton; Sundsmyr, Staffan; University of Gothenburg/Graduate School; Göteborgs universitet/Graduate School
    In this paper we demonstrate that it is possible to increase average weekly exercise frequency by up to 9.45%, by sending the study participants e-mails. Several of the leading causes of death globally are closely linked to physical inactivity. In fact, more people die from coronary heart disease than from starvation every year. Exercise can mitigate the risks of these diseases and increase general health. We consider exercise as an intertemporal choice in the context of the Hyperbolic discounting model. To increase exercise frequency we perform a natural field experiment with the Nordic gym chain SATS, where we send three different types of e-mails to three randomized treatment groups over nine weeks. We then compare the treatments to a randomized control group with a difference-in-differences approach. The results show a difference in magnitudes in coefficients for the three different treatments, indicating that the textual contents of the e-mails matter for treatment outcome. This thesis contributes to the body of literature by including very large sample sizes compared to previous studies within the field, and furthermore, by having a completely randomized sample and not having any self selection into the study.