Potency or publicity : The effect of the Swedish regional development program on municipal employment

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the effect of economic support zones within the Swedish development programs on employment. This question is answered using a difference in differences design and a reform in 2014 that changed the zone status of 18 municipalities. The thesis merges aggregated RAMS-data for municipal employment and an extract on granted funds from NYPS. No effect is found on neither the total number of employed nor any composition changes in workers between sectors. The results do not follow the theoretical predictions of Bartik (1991) and Moretti (2010) and is not in line with most of the previous literature. A reason for this divergence is that labour mobility is not affected by the reform which prevents any effect on employment.