This year’s SITE Development Day conference will focus on the Russian war on Ukraine. We will discuss the situation in Ukraine and neighbouring countries, how to finance and organize financial support within the EU and within Sweden, and how to deal with the current energy crisis.

The venture capital industry is hampered by its own focus on short-term returns, according to the startup incubator of the Stockholm School of Economics. SSE Business Lab is now closing a new 40 million SEK fund backed by Bonnier Ventures and well-known profiles like Anna Nordell-Westling, Sven Hagströmer, Anna Kinberg Batra and Sebastian Knutsson. “Long-term thinking amplifies the potential returns”, says CEO Julia Delin.

Even bigger steps towards the goal of getting more students to form companies are being taken by the Stockholm School of Economics and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The schools are strengthening their joint program and are assisted by the entrepreneurs behind Budbee, Estrid and PocketLaw, as well as investors from Summa Equity and Kinnevik.

Against the background of fast rising gasoline and diesel prices in 2022, a number of European countries have reduced fuel tax rates, often in the form of temporary “gas tax holidays”. In this policy brief, SITE researchers Julius Andersson and Celina Tippmann, analyse the tax incidence by comparing the gasoline price development in Sweden to that in Denmark, where the fuel tax rate remained unchanged.

The concern of Russian gas supply disruption and its implications has never been as serious. Chloé Le Coq, Professor at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (CRED) and a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), discusses how nudging energy consumers to lower their demand may support the plans of the European Commission (EC).

It is no secret that what we eat and how this has been produced plays a large part in the process of climate change. While we know that changing our eating habits can have a meaningful impact on the environment, changing does not seem to be as easy as it sounds – especially not when factoring in the cultural meaning our culinary habits carry. Valentina Bosetti, Dr. Friederike Döbbe and Hannes Leo presented their findings during the event Tours d’ Europe, on 14 June. 

SITE and NES (New Economic School) researchers investigate how multinational firms manage their relationships with governments under the threat of expropriation. Exploring micro data from the oil and gas industry worldwide, they show that the multinationals delay investment, production and tax payments by more than five years in countries with weak institutions relative to countries with strong ones. These findings are consistent with the theory suggesting that delaying rents to the government in absence of formal enforcement could decrease the risk of expropriation.

Can oil and gas sanctions and EU’s plans to reduce dependence on Russian energy affect EU transition to renewables? Elena Paltseva, Associate Professor at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), shares her insights and discusses the current European growth strategy.

The recent record-high gas prices have triggered legitimate concerns regarding the EU’s energy security, especially with dependence on natural gas from Russia. This brief discusses the historical and current risks associated with Russian gas imports. SITE researchers Chloé Le Coq and Elena Paltseva argue that decreasing the reliance on Russian gas may not be feasible in the short-to-mid-run, especially with the EU’s goals of green transition and the electrification of the economy. To ensure the security of natural gas supply from Russia, the EU has to adopt the (long-proclaimed) coordinated energy policy strategy.

The need for urgent climate action and energy transformation away from fossil fuels is widely acknowledged. Yet, current country plans for emission reductions do not reach the requirements to contain global warming under 2°C. What is worse, there is even reasonable doubt about the commitment to said plans given recent history and existing future investment plans into fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure development. This policy brief shortly summarizes the presentations and discussions at the SITE Development Day Conference, held on December 8, 2021, focusing on climate change policies and the challenge of a green energy transition in Eastern Europe.