A Royally Good Idea? A Study of the Relationship Between Swedish State Visits and Aggregate Swedish Merchandise Exports.

Sammanfattning: Most countries engage in a wide variety of export promotion activities that provide domestic firms with significant support in the hopes of increasing trade volumes. The aim of this thesis is to examine one type of official Swedish export promotion, namely state visits. I investigate the potential effect of state visits, performed by Sweden’s head of state King Carl XVI Gustaf, on Swedish aggregate merchandise exports. This is done by estimating a gravity model fixed effects panel data specification of Swedish exports for the period 1973 to 2006. I find no evidence, in my analysis, of state visits having any effect on Swedish aggregate exports, suggesting that state visits may not be a particularly useful export promotion activity.