We test for gender, class, and ethnic discrimination in the Norwegian rental housing market by using fake application letters. Females, individuals with high job status, and ethnic Norwegians are more likely to receive positive responses. For example, being an Arabic man and working in a warehouse is associated with a 25 percentage point lower probability of receiving a positive response when showing interest in an apartment, as compared to an ethnically Norwegian female economist. We conclude that gender, class, and ethnic discrimination do exist in the Norwegian housing market, and ethnic discrimination seems to be the most prevalent form of discrimination.

Den här boken ger en pedagogisk och detaljerad genomgång av den mikroekonomi som varit nationalekonomins kärna under snart 100 år: utbud och efterfrågan, nyttoteori och vinstmaximering. Men författarna sätter också in teorin i ett större sammanhang, där institutioner, beteendeekonomi och politik beaktas och analyseras. Målet är att skapa förståelse för hur marknadsekonomin fungerar, men även att ge läsaren verktyg för att analysera statens roll i samhället och vilka institutioner som krävs för att en fungerande marknadsekonomi ska uppstå. Denna femte upplaga har reviderats och uppdaterats genomgående, bland annat med nya avsnitt om plattformsföretag och konkurrens på internet. Dessutom har många övningar med lösningar lagts till och gjorts om.

A nudge changes people’s actions without removing their options or altering their incentives. During the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the Swedish Region of Uppsala sent letters with pre-booked appointments to inhabitants aged16–17 instead of opening up manual appointment booking. Using regional and municipal vaccination data, wedocument a higher vaccine uptake among 16- to 17-year-olds in Uppsala compared to untreated control regions(constructed using the synthetic control method as well as neighboring municipalities). The results highlight pre-booked appointments as a strategy for increasing vaccination rates in populations with low perceived risk.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effects of fire safe cigarette laws on fire mortality and cigarette-related fires in the USA.

METHODS: We examined the gradual implementation of the laws to identify their average effects, using difference-in-differences analysis to account for common year effects, time-invariant state effects, state-specific trends and observable time-varying state-level covariates.

RESULTS: We found no statistically significant effects on all-cause fire mortality, residential fire mortality or cigarette-caused fire rates. The estimates for cigarette-caused fire deaths were significant under some specifications, but were not robust to the inclusion of state-specific trends or comparisons to effects on other cause-determined fires.

CONCLUSIONS: Given the mixed state of our results, we conclude that previous claims regarding the effects of fire safe cigarette laws may be premature.

Background: This study aimed to describe the clinical and cost-effectiveness evidence supporting reimbursementdecisions of new cancer drugs and analyze the influence of trial characteristics and the cost per quality-adjusted lifeyears (QALYs) on the likelihood of reimbursement in Sweden.Patients and methods: Data were extracted from all appraisal dossiers for new cancer drugs seeking reimbursement inSweden and claiming added therapeutical value between the years 2010 and 2020. The data were analyzed usingdescriptive statistics, and logistic regression models were also used with the cost per QALY, study design,comparator, and evidence on final outcomes in the clinical trials as predictors of reimbursement.Results: All 60 included appraisals were based on trial evidence that assessed at least one final outcome (overallsurvival [OS] or quality of life [QoL]), although rarely as a primary outcome. Of the appraisals with a final decision(n ¼ 58), 79% were approved for reimbursement. Among the reimbursed drugs, only half had trial evidencedemonstrating improved OS or QoL. Only one drug had trial evidence supporting improvements in both OS andQoL. The average cost per QALY for reimbursed cancer drugs was estimated to be 748 560 SEK (V73 583). A highercost per QALY was found to decrease the likelihood of reimbursement by 9.4% for every 100 000 SEK (V9830)higher cost per QALY (P ¼ 0.03). For cost-effectiveness models without direct evidence of improvements in finaloutcomes, a larger QALY gain was observed compared with those with evidence mainly relying on intermediate andsurrogate outcomes.Conclusions: There are substantial uncertainties in the clinical and cost-effectiveness evidence underlyingreimbursement decisions of new cancer drugs. Decision makers should be cautious of the limited evidence onpatient-centered outcomes and the implications of allocating resources to expensive treatments with uncertainvalue for money.

Background and ObjectiveCancer drug costs have increased considerably within healthcare systems, but many drugs lack quality-of-life (QoL) and overall survival (OS) data at the time of reimbursement approval. This study aimed to review the extent of subsequent literature documenting improvements in OS and QoL for cancer drug indications where no such evidence existed at the time of reimbursement approval.MethodsDrug indications with claims of added therapeutical value but a lack of evidence on OS and QoL that were reimbursed between 2010 and 2020 in Sweden were included for review. Searches were conducted in PubMed and ClinicalTrial.gov for randomized controlled trials examining OS and QoL.ResultsOf the 22 included drug indications, seven were found to have at least one trial with conclusive evidence of improvements in OS or QoL after a mean follow-up of 6.6 years. The remaining 15 drug indications either lacked subsequent randomized controlled trial data on OS or QoL (n = 6) or showed no statistically significant improvements (n = 9). Only one drug demonstrated evidence of improvement in both OS and QoL for its indication.ConclusionsA considerable share of reimbursed cancer drug indications continue to lack evidence of improvement in both OS and QoL. With limited healthcare resources and an increasing cancer burden, third-party payers have strong incentives to require additional post-reimbursement data to confirm any improvements in OS and QoL.

Previous research finds that people are overconfident and that men are more overconfident than women. Using a very precise confidence measure, this article shows, however, that whereas boys are overconfident, girls are actually underconfident regarding their mathematics performance. We conducted a survey where 14-year-old high school students were asked what grade they thought they would get in a mathematics test a week later. These results were then compared with their actual grade. Boys were overconfident about their grades, whereas girls were underconfident.

We study whether salient media coverage of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean affects individual xenophobic attitudes. We combine a randomized survey experiment - a variant of the classic trolley dilemma' - that implicitly elicits individual attitudes towards foreigners, with variation in interview timing, and find that such issue salience significantly decreases xenophobic attitudes by 2.2 percentage points. Our results thus support the idea that exposure to news describing immigrants as victims (instead of a threat) can significantly affect public opinion and mitigate bias against immigrants.

Prior research on active labour market programmes (ALMPs) for young people has revealed either no effect or negative effects on transition rates into employment. In addition to accessing the programme content, participation in ALMPs bestows the right to a supplementary benefit. Yet, the direct effect of this benefit on the use and outcome of ALMPs remains largely unknown. We study the effects of a Norwegian policy that pays much higher benefits to recipients when they reach 19 years of age. This policy provides a natural experimental setting that allows us to utilise the age discontinuity to observe whether young people are more likely to become benefit recipients after their nineteenth birthday, and to estimate the effect of benefits on the labour supply. As age determines the increase in benefits rather than need, it creates a random and exogenous variation in the criteria for allocating cash benefits. We use Norwegian administrative register data that cover all 18 to 19 year olds during the period 2003 to 2012. We find no effect on programme take-up or employment rates. Hence, benefits do not work against the aim of ALMPs and young people's responsiveness to financial incentives cannot explain such programmes’ lack of effects.

On 20 November 2020, the government of Sweden banned on-premise alcohol sales after 10:30 p.m. and then after 8 p.m. on December 24. This study aims to estimate the impact of earlier pub closing hours on emergency calls to the police. We use a quasi-experimental hybrid differences-in-differences design, drawing on data for emergency calls in Sweden. The primary outcome measure is the daily number of emergency calls to the police in Sweden 70 days before the intervention and 70 days after the intervention. The primary control series is the daily number of emergency calls to the police in Sweden during the preceding year, 70 days before the intervention and 70 days after the intervention. We fail to find an effect on daily emergency calls, or nighttime emergency calls to the police, from the restrictions on the sale of alcohol. There is, however, some evidence indicating that weekend emergency calls may have been affected, but that potential effect does not translate into an overall effect. While our study is limited in its focus, it contributes to using a wide range of time windows and a large geographical area (the whole of Sweden) to inform on displacement effects, as well as in considering a broader set of robustness checks. We suggest that our results and future work should be seen in light of our limitations and our contribution, respectively.

We present the results of a survey experiment where the respondents were randomly assigned the opportunity to read an information brochure regarding recently implemented changes in the Norwegian pension system. We find that those given the opportunity to read the information material are more likely to believe that the reform has made the pension system easier to understand.

We present the results of a survey experiment where the treatment group was provided with an information brochure regarding recently implemented changes in the Norwegian pension system, whereas a control group was not. We find that those who received the information are more likely to respond correctly to questions regarding the new pension system. The information effect is larger for those with high education, but only for the most complex aspect of the reform. Despite greater knowledge of the reform in the treatment group, we find no differences between the treatment and control group in their preferences regarding when to retire or whether to combine work and pension uptake.

To what degree are preferences determined by fundamental and stable value orientations, or are they vulnerable to exogenous shocks to issue saliency? We exploit that the second round of the European Social Survey was conducted around the time when Mohammed Bouyeri murdered Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004. The murder was covered extensively across Europe and led to a debate about the impact of mass immigration. We consider the murder as a natural experiment which allows us to explore how a shock to issue saliency affects immigration policy preferences. We compare preferences of those interviewed right before the murder (control group) with those interviewed right after the murder (treatment group). We find robust evidence of a significant treatment effect in a pooled analysis with country fixed effects. However, when we allow the treatment effect to vary across countries, we find evidence of more support for restrictive policy in only three countries (Norway, Spain, and Slovakia).

A woman's labor market participation and risk of divorce are argued to be important explanatory factors for the gender gap in political preferences. We utilize a Norwegian data set which allows a rigid test of these arguments because it includes information on vote choice, preferences regarding child and elder care spending, and extensive information on the relationship with the current partner. We find a gender gap in political preferences, but no evidence that it can be explained by women's risk of divorce, while the impact of labor market participation is not robust across specifications. To some extent, the gender gap in voting is driven by unmarried women voting left.

Government authorities use resources on information campaigns in order to inform citizens about relevant policy changes. The motivation is usually that individuals sometimes are ill-informed about the public policies relevant for their choices. In a survey experiment where the treatment group was provided with public information material on the social security system, we assess the short- and medium-term knowledge effects. We show that the short run effects of the information on knowledge disappear completely within 4 months. The findings illustrate the limits of public information campaigns to improve knowledge about relevant policy reforms.

Pharmaceuticals represent the third-largest expenditure item in health care spending in the OECD countries, and cost growth is around 5% per year in many OECD countries. One possible way to contain the rise in pharmaceutical spending is the use of cost-sharing schemes that makes insured individuals directly bear parts of the cost of a drug. This study estimates the price sensitivity of demand for prescription drugs using data on all prescription drug purchases from a random sample of 400,000 Swedes followed from 2010 to 2013. We use a regression kink design (RKD) by exploiting the kinked Swedish cost-sharing scheme to assess the price elasticity. Further, since the cost-sharing scheme has changed over time, we also use a double-difference RKD to account for potential confounding nonlinearities around the kink. Our results indicate that the standard RKD results are biased and exaggerate the price sensitivity. Our preferred double-difference RKD specifications show no or minor price sensitivity (95% CI price elasticity from - 0.12 to 0.02). The results are similar in several sub-group analyses across age groups, sexes, and income quartiles.

The factors shaping people's preferences for municipal labor income tax rates in Sweden are assessed using survey data. The tax rate actually faced by the respondents does not have explanatory power for their attitudes toward the tax rate. The hypothesis that this small or nonexistent effect of the actual tax rate is caused by a Tiebout bias finds no support, yet instrumental variable estimations indicate that the actual municipal tax rate may be of importance for attitudes toward the tax rate. Also, people with higher education, people who regularly read a newspaper, people who agree with the political left, and people who state that they are satisfied with their municipal services are less likely to want to decrease the municipal tax. People with low income, people who claim to have a low level of knowledge about society, and people who agree with the political right are conversely more likely to want to decrease the municipal tax. © School of Taxation and Business Law (Atax), Australian School of Business The University of New South Wales.

Previous research finds that schoolgirls tend to be underconfident with respect to their mathematics performance, while schoolboys tend to be overconfident. We asked Swedish university students (aged 18–35) what grade they thought they would get in a macroeconomics exam 1 week later. These results were compared with their actual grade and we find no evidence of men being overconfident, but women are underconfident about their test performance. These results suggest that the findings that schoolgirls are underconfident about their math performance also carry over to grown-up women studying macroeconomics.

Using survey data from Norway and Sweden, we assess people’s attitudes toward gender equality. Previous studies argue that these attitudes are more egalitarian in Sweden than in Norway. Similar to previous research, we find that Swedes are more positive towards gender equality in general. However, we find no differences regarding views on egalitarian sharing of household responsibilities, and Norwegians are actually more supportive of government intervention to increase gender equality. This suggests that the lower support for gender equality in Norway is not as clear-cut as previously thought and that active state intervention to improve gender equality may be even more feasible in Norway than in Sweden.

Does marriage make men more productive, or do more productive men marry? Previous studies have reached different conclusions but have also been conducted using different methodologies in different countries and in different time periods. We use two sources of European panel data (spanning the years 1994-2001 and 2003-2007) to assess the relationship between marriage and labor market outcomes. By using data from 12 countries over a 13 year period, we are able to investigate the impact of marriage in different country groups and across time. We find that selection into marriage accounts for most of the differences in hours worked and wages between married and non-married men. With respect to wages we note that while the difference between married and non-married males has increased over time, the actual effect of marriage has disappeared.

This contribution assesses attitudes toward prostitution in Norway and Sweden, where it is illegal to buy sex. Sweden's law was put into place in 1999, and Norway followed in 2009. These laws were embedded in different market structures and discourses when enacted. This study uses a 2008 Internet survey to shed light on attitudes toward various aspects of prostitution while controlling for other socio-demographic factors. Findings include that men and sexual liberals of either gender are more likely positive toward prostitution and men and women who are conservative or support gender equality are more negative. Holding anti-immigration views correlates with more positive attitudes toward buying, but not selling, sex. Norwegians are more positive than Swedes toward prostitution. Supporting gender equality has more explanatory power in Sweden than in Norway, which may be due to the use of gender equality to frame the Swedish debate.

International trafficking in humans for sexual exploitation is an economic activity driven by profit motives. Laws regarding commercial sex influence the profitability of trafficking and may thus affect the inflow of trafficking to a country. Using two recent sources of European cross country data we show that trafficking of persons for commercial sexual exploitation (as proxied by the data sets we are using) is least prevalent in countries where prostitution is illegal, most prevalent in countries where prostitution is legalized, and in between in those countries where prostitution is legal but procuring illegal. Case studies of two countries (Norway and Sweden) that have criminalized buying sex support the possibility of a causal link from harsher prostitution laws to reduced trafficking. Although the data do not allow us to infer robust causal inference, the results suggest that criminalizing procuring, or going further and criminalizing buying and/or selling sex, may reduce the amount of trafficking to a country.

Daughters of elderly women are more likely to provide informal care than sons. If care managers take this into account and view informal care as a substitute for formal care, they will statistically discriminate against the mothers of daughters. Using a survey experiment among professional needs assessors for long-term care services in Norway, we find that if a woman with a daughter had a son instead, she would receive 34 percent more formal care. On the other hand, daughters do not provide more care for fathers. Correspondingly, we find no effect of child gender for fathers in the experiment.

In an international comparison, the Nordic countries are generous care spenders and a relatively large proportion of the populations receive formal care services. However, in respect of service provision, the Nordic countries are less similar today than they were some decades ago. Using survey data from three Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, we first document the differences in informal care between the countries, and then we assess its impact on the relationship between informal caregiving and formal employment. We find that informal care is most common in Denmark and least common in Sweden. However, those who provide care in Sweden provide care more often than people in both Norway and Denmark. There is a negative correlation between being a caregiver and the probability of being employed in Norway and Denmark, but not in Sweden. With specific regard to parental care, there is no general relation between the provision of parental care and employment, but those providing substantial care are clearly less likely to work than others. Caring for a disabled child is less common than caring for a parent, but the negative effects on employment are even stronger.

Although theoretically contentious, most empirical studies contend that electoral-political factors structure the welfare state. In practice, most studies concentrate on ‘government partisanship’, that is the ideological character of the government. We agree that politics matters but also seek to expand our understanding of what ‘politics’ should be taken to mean. Drawing on recent comparative research on agenda-setting, we study the impact of whether welfare state issues were broadly salient in the public sphere during the election campaign that produced the government. We formulate hypotheses about how such systemic campaign salience and government partisanship (separately and interactively) affect welfare generosity. We also consider how such effects might have changed, taking into account challenges to standard assumptions of representative democracy coming from the ‘new politics of the welfare state’ framework. We combine well-known, but updated, data on welfare state generosity and government partisanship, with original contextual data on campaign salience from 16 West European countries for the years 1980–2008. We find that campaigns matter but also that their impact has changed. During the first half of the examined period (the 1980s and early 1990s), it mainly served to facilitate government partisanship effects on the welfare state. More recently, big-time campaign attention to welfare state issues results in some retrenchment (almost) regardless of who forms the postelection government. This raises concerns about the democratic status of the politics of welfare state reform in Europe.

In an Internet field experiment in Sweden, we assessed the importance of ethnicity for successful online dating proposals for men. Randomizing names and occupation and holding physical appearance constant, our findings show that Swedishness is valued in the dating market and Arabs suffer an ethnic penalty, compared with both Swedes and Greeks. This implies that Arabs have a harder time finding dates, also in a frictionless setting as an Internet dating site.

Recent theoretical literature in social policy argued that climate change posed a new risk to the states and called for transformation from a traditional welfare state to an ‘eco’ state. From a theoretical point of view, different welfare regimes may manage environmental/climate change risks in a similar way to social risks. However, not much has been done to explore the issue empirically. To this end, this paper aims to investigate public attitudes towards environmental and traditional welfare policies given that environmental change is a new social risk the welfare states have to address. Do individuals that care for one area also care for the other? That is, do the preferences in these two policy spheres complement or substitute one another? We test these hypotheses both at the individual- and country-level, using data from 14 countries included in all three waves (1993, 2000, and 2010) of the environmental module in the International Social Survey Programme. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between attitudes towards income redistribution (indicator of support for welfare policy) and willingness to pay for environmental protection (indicator of support for environmental policy). Our findings suggest that attitudes in the two areas are substitutes in the total sample, but that the relationship is very small and only statistically significant in some specifications. When we explore country differentials, we observe clear heterogeneity in the relationship, which can be explained by differences in political and historical contexts across countries.

This paper analyzes whether class size has an effect on the prevalence of mental health problems and well-being among adolescents in Swedish schools. We use cross-sectional data collected in year 2008 covering 2755 Swedish adolescents in ninth grade from 40 schools and 159 classes. We utilize different econometric approaches to address potential between- and within-school endogeneity including school-fixed effects and regression discontinuity approaches. Our results indicate no robust effects of class size on the prevalence of mental health problems and well-being, and we cannot reject the hypothesis that class size has no effect on mental health and well-being at all.

Objective: This paper analyzes how primary care physician visits are affected by the level of copayment in Sweden. Data source: We use data between the years 2003-2012 from 21 Swedish health care regions that have the mandate to set their own level of copayment. The copayment per visit varies between 10 and 20 for these years and regions. Study design: Our strategy to identify the causal effect and deal with unobserved endogeneity of price changes on physician visits is based on a panel data model using fixed effects to control for region and time and regional-variation in time trends. Principal finding: We cannot reject that the copayment has no statistical or economic effect of significance, and we estimate the "zero effect" with very high precision. Conclusion: In a setting with sub-national regions with autonomy to set copayments the results points to that the copayment is not an important predictor for the number of health care visits. The result is in line with some previous studies on European data where the range of copayments used tends to be relatively low. 

This article analyses how health-care utilization is affected by copayments in a tax-financed health-care system. The article utilizes a natural experiment in which a health-care region in Sweden changed the price of healthcare in such a way that primary care general physician prices increased by 33%. We use daily visit data in the treatment region and a neighbouring control region where no price change took place and analyse the effect using differences-in-differences as well as differences-in-differences-in-differences models. The results from the preferred models indicate no effect on health-care utilization due to the price change, a result that also holds across different socio-economic subregions in the treatment region.

Detta är den sjunde rapporten i serien Utveckling av undervisning och examination i högre utbildning från den Universitetspedagogiska enheten (UPE), och den femte publikationen som bygger på bidrag från enhetens årliga konferens.

I föreliggande rapport kan du ta del av sex olika utvecklingsprojekt inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet. Fem av bidragen i rapporten har utvecklats från projekt som presenterades vid enhetens universitetsgemensamma konferens 2020 och ett bidrag presenterades vid 2017 års konferens. År 2020 var temat Från campus till online då vi ville belysa erfarenheter vi fått till följd av undervisning under Covid-19. Likt tidigare publikationer spänner dock även årets texter över flera olika ämnen. Det handlar bland annat om projektet Rethink:KAU som kartlagt och utvecklat stödet till lärosätets distansstudenter, vilka erfarenheter undervisande personal tar med sig efter att ha behövt ställa om en planerad campuskurs till att bli off-campus eller hur lärare på matematikutbildningen gått tillväga när de tagit fram matriser för självutvärdering, ett digitalt verktyg som stöttar både studenter och lärare. 

Publicerade texter i rapportserien kan ligga till grund för pedagogisk meritering vid ansökan om att bli meriterad eller excellent inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet.

Den Universitetspedagogiska enheten kommer kontinuerligt att ge ut rapporter inom området undervisning och lärande där verksamma lärare och medarbetare delar med sig av erfarenheter från utvecklingsarbeten inom undervisning och examination. 

I föreliggande rapport kan du ta del av åtta olika utvecklingsprojekt inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet. Samtliga bidrag i rapporten har utvecklats från projekt som presenterades vid enhetens universitetsgemensamma konferens 2021, med temat Redefining Learning Spaces. Naturligt nog handlade många presentationer just om hur man behövt omdefiniera eller omvandla sin undervisning på olika sätt till följd av Covid 19-pandemin, men som vanligt presenterades även andra utvecklingsarbeten inom högskolepedagogik. 

Det handlar bland annat om den nya modellen för universitetslärares kompetensutveckling och behörighetsprövning som införts vid Karlstads universitet, eller hur en omdefiniering av lärandemiljöer och införandet av nya digitala metoder kan underlätta undervisningen för förstaårsstudenter på matematik. Du kan också läsa om hur användandet av en skrivplatta tycks underlätta ekonomistudenters upplevda lärande jämfört med vad en dokumentkamera gör, eller hur seniora psykologstudenter har stöttat förstaårsstudenter i att utveckla och träna färdigheter och förmågor som kan underlätta övergången till högre utbildning.

Publicerade texter i rapportserien kan ligga till grund för pedagogisk meritering vid ansökan om att bli meriterad eller excellent inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet.

I föreliggande rapport kan du ta del av sju olika utvecklingsprojekt inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet. Samtliga bidrag i rapporten har utvecklats från projekt som presenterats vid enhetens universitetspedagogiska konferens.

I årets upplaga kan du bland annat läsa om en ny typ av tentamen, en klimatutmaning. Vad händer när studenter uppmanas att under en månads tid göra något annorlunda i sin vardag, så som att resa med cykel eller buss istället för bil? I en annan studie undersöker författarna huruvida det är någon skillnad för studenterna om läraren använder läsplatta eller dokumentkamera i inspelade föreläsningar.

Du får även en inblick i hur flexibla nätbaserade kurser för yrkesverksamma, i samverkan med företag och organisationer, kan bidra till det livslånga lärandet, och inte minst vilken roll sociala medier kan få när en kurs om vetenskaplig metod plötsligt ställs om till distans i pandemitider. 

Publicerade texter i rapportserien kan ligga till grund för pedagogisk meritering vid ansökan om att bli meriterad eller excellent inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet.

Detta är den sjätte rapporten i serien Utveckling av undervisning och examination i högre utbildning från den Universitetspedagogiska enheten (UPE).

I föreliggande rapport kan du ta del av fem olika utvecklingsprojekt inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet. Samtliga texter i rapporten är utvecklade utifrån projekt som presenterats vid enhetens universitetsgemensamma konferens 2019 då temat var: Kursdesign i Canvas. Projekten spänner över flera olika ämnen. Det handlar bland annat om hur lärplattformen Canvas kan användas för digitala krisövningar, hur tydlighet i Canvas kan underlätta för distansstudenter och hur universitetsbiblioteket utvecklat tre öppna Canvaskursmoduler i akademisk informationskompetens.

Publicerade texter i rapportserien kan ligga till grund för pedagogisk meritering vid ansökan om att bli meriterad eller excellent inom undervisning och examination vid Karlstads universitet.

Den Universitetspedagogiska enheten kommer kontinuerligt att ge ut rapporter inom området undervisning och lärande där verksamma lärare och medarbetare delar med sig av erfarenheter från utvecklingsarbeten inom undervisning och examination.

Background: Differences in health care utilization across geographical areas are well documented within several countries. If the variation across areas cannot be explained by differences in medical need, it can be a sign of inefficiency or misallocation of public health care resources. Methods: In this observational, longitudinal panel study we use regional level data covering the 21 Swedish regions (county councils) over 13 years and a random effects model to assess to what degree regional variation in outpatient physician visits is explained by observed demand factors such as health, demography and socio-economic factors. Results: The results show that regional mortality, as a proxy for population health, and demography do not explain regional variation in visits to primary care physicians, but explain about 50% of regional variation in visits to outpatient specialists. Adjusting for socio-economic and basic supply-side factors explains 33% of the regional variation in primary physician visits, but adds nothing to explaining the variation in specialist visits. Conclusion: 50-67% of regional variation remains unexplained by a large number of observable regional characteristics, indicating that omitted and possibly unobserved factors contribute substantially to the regional variation. We conclude that variations in health care utilization across regions is not very well explained by underlying medical need and demand, measured by mortality, demographic and socio-economic factors.

We estimate the price sensitivity in health care among adolescents and young adults, and assess how it varies across income groups and gender, using a regression discontinuity design. We use the age differential cost-sharing in Swedish primary care as our identification strategy. At the 20th birthday, the copayment increases from €0 to approx. €10 per primary care physician visit and close to this threshold the copayment faced by each person is distributed almost as good as if randomized. The analysis is performed using high-quality health care and economic register data of 73,000 individuals aged 18–22. Our results show that the copayment decreases the average number of visits by 7%. Among women visits are reduced by 9%, for low-income individuals by 11%, and for low-income women by 14%. In conclusion, modest copayments have significant utilization effects, and even in a policy context with relatively low income inequalities, the effect is substantially larger in low-income groups and among women.