To Örebro University

This thesis addresses empirically understudied and politically significant issues. Specifically, it examines the blue economy and renewable energy, both of which are central to the European Union’s economic and environmental strategies.

Essay I examine employment dynamics in the Swedish blue economy, i.e., maritime and maritime-related sectors. By utilizing a novel firmlevel dataset covering 1998–2020, the analysis finds that firms within the blue economy generally exhibit higher employment growth and lower job destruction than their counterparts in other sectors.

Essays II and III examine EU fisheries governance. Essay II examines the policy preferences of EU member states, as indicated by bargaining outcomes on Total Allowable Catches (TACs). The findings suggest that the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Lithuania, and Poland advocate for TACs above scientific advice, while Germany supports lower TACs. Essay III assesses interest group lobbying within the Baltic Sea Advisory Council, demonstrating that fisheries achieve greater lobbying success when scientific advice is more than 20 percent below the status quo or the level of conflict is high. In contrast, other interest groups are more successful when the level of conflict is low and scientific advice is closer to or above the status quo.

Finally, Essay IV presents a meta-analysis of 252 estimates from 21 studies on the impact of wind turbines on property values. The results indicate a negative and significant effect on properties located within 4 km of a wind turbine, with stronger effects at closer distances and in more densely populated areas.

We evaluate the N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) using panel quantile regression analysis. We investigate the relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP per capita for 74 countries over the period of 1994-2012. We include additional explanatory variables, such as renewable energy consumption, technological development, trade, and institutional quality. We find evidence for the N-shaped EKC in all income groups, except for the upper-middle-income countries. Heterogeneous characteristics are, however, observed over the N-shaped EKC. Finally, we find a negative relationship between renewable energy consumption and CO2 emissions, which highlights the importance of promoting greener energy in order to combat global warming.