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In the Swedish Premium Pension Scheme (PPS) all citizens in paid employment allocate part of their public pension savings to mutual funds. In so doing they tend to distribute their choices maximally across different stock fund categories. It is hypothesised that this reflects the naïve application of a variety-inducing diversification heuristic. The results of two experiments simulating choices of fund categories in the PPS support this hypothesis by showing that participating undergraduates chose stock funds investing in overlapping and non-overlapping markets or industries in a way demonstrating failure to take into account covariation among fund returns. Administrators of the PPS and similar defined-contribution pension plans should provide participants with comprehensive advice on how to diversify their investment. Dans le régime de retraite suédois (PPS), tous les citoyens ayant un emploi salarié allouent une part de l'épargne de leur retraite publique à des fonds d'investissements. Ce faisant, ils tendent majoritairement à répartir leurs choix dans différentes catégories de fonds. On a fait l'hypothèse que cela reflète l'application naïve d'une heuristique de la diversification. Les résultats de deux expérimentations simulant des choix entre différentes catégories de fonds pour le PPS confirment cette hypothèse : les sujets (étudiants) ont choisi des fonds en actions et devaient investir sur des marchés ou dans des branches industrielles relevant ou non du même secteur économique et cela d'une façon qui mettait en évidence leur incapacitéà prendre en considération le fait que le retour sur investissement de différents fonds pouvait être lié. Les administrateurs du PPS et de plans de pensions avec versements programmés devraient fournir aux participants des conseils avisés sur la façon de diversifier leur investissement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the amount of capital investment that is used for financing sunk costs in Sweden's manufacturing industry. The author here considers the prices paid for used capital assets, in particular the sunk cost component of capital investments. The extent to which an asset is sunk costs depends on the characteristics of both the asset and the second-hand market. Salvage-values are typically higher for non-specific assets with liquid second-hand markets such as trucks, aircraft, and office buildings, than for equipment tail or made to the requirements of the initial owner. The fraction of a capital investment that represents sunk costs has been an important-but quantitatively largely unknown-building block in many economic models. In recent work on the timing of investments under uncertainty, the presence of sunk costs introduces an option value of waiting for new information and delaying irreversible decisions. Some remarks on second-hand prices of used capital assets are now in order.

The article discusses the evaluation conducted by the National Accounting and Audit Bureau on the effects of the Swedish investment allowance policy of 1971-1973. The survey is aimed at distributing slow investment functions through the data gathered each quarter. Further information on such data is presented.