News

Every year IFN arranges a series of seminars open to the public. Topics for these are chosen from IFN's fields of research. During 2017, most of the seminars have been filmed, and four out of six seminars were in English. Having some free time during the holidays? If so, you might be interested in watching one of these recordings.

A second report on integration should probably also be written, said Andreas Bergh, IFN and Lund University, when commenting on the ESO report Inspiration for Integration, by Patrick Joyce, Ratio. The report compares integration policies in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. Joyce stated that Germany is the country that has been most successful to integrate immigrants in the labor market, in the short and long term. But, Andreas Bergh said, it would have been better to discuss the labor market in Britain, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. He explained that these countries could better serve as sources of inspiration. Among other things, earned income tax credit can be an alternative to subsidies to employers to hire new arrivals.
 

A minor change in market trading rules could save taxpayers billions of dollars. This is the conclusion that Pär Holmberg, IFN, draws from his research in a blog post at LSE Business Review. Holmberg argues that when ties occur at low offer prices, higher priority should be given to sell orders with a large volume. "The cost to implement the new pro-competitive rule would be negligible compared to the savings, when the turnover is high" Holmberg writes.

Brussels | Magnus Henrekson, IFN, presented the report Institutional Reform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship: An Agenda for Europe (Project Fires) at a seminar hosted by the Permanent Representation of Sweden to the EU and jointly organized by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise and IFN. The study calls for more productive entrepreneurship to improve the quality of life of EU citizens, and for the EU to enhance the competitiveness in the global marketplace. The panel agreed that the same recipe doesn't apply to all member states. Though, Gunnar Hökmark, MEP (M), argued that some things fit all member states, for example less regulation and more openness for competion.

Edward Lazear of Stanford University visited IFN on Wednesday and launched a public seminar. Lazear has studied immigration to the United States, as well as to Sweden, and found that the underlying mechanisms are much the same in both countries. He explained that the success of the new arrivals is more dependent on the rules set by the recipient country than the country from which new arrivals have come. If integration is defined as immigrants learning the language of the new country, those immigrants living in areas with many people from their old home country are integrated, into society as a whole, at a much lower rate.

Mårten Blix, IFN, explains in a new pod how come that he studies the effects of digitization on public finances. He compares the digitization with electrification and says that the big difference to previous technology leaps is the speed with which the digital reality comes to us. The one who is interested in the development and who keeps up with progress will benefit, he says, explaining that it is primarily not jobs as such that disappear with technical progress but the content in jobs.

Has expanding trade between the U.S. and China contributed to the polarization of U.S. politics? Analyzing outcomes from the 2002 and 2010 congressional elections, Kaveh Majlesi, Lund University and affiliated to IFN, along with David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson have detected an ideological realignment in trade-exposed local labor markets that commences prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Society could save billions of dollars every day if trading in commodities, energy and securities was made more competitive through a minor rule change, according to the new paper “Pro-competitive rationing in multi-unit auctions”, which is to be published in Economic Journal.

Martin Ljunge, researcher at IFN, has been appointed Associate Professor in Economics at Södertörn University. Ljunge graduated from the University of Chicago in 2006. His research field is primarily social economics. One of the questions he seeks to answer in his research is how trust affects the health and well-being of individuals. His latest study is titled "The ‘Healthy Worker Effect’: Do Healthy People Climb the Occupational Ladder?". Just recently he has been awarded funding from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for a project "aimed at deepening our understanding of financial decisionsmade by immigrants in Sweden".

Radio and podcasts, like television, are becoming more common for for all of us to gain knowledge about research and research results. More and more newspapers make television and radio programs. When the book of Kunskapssynen och pedagogiken (Dialogos 2017) was recently presented, the magazine Axess produced both television and podcasts of an interview with Magnus Henrekson. In addition, Public Service (SVT) interviewed on the same book in the show "Politik i bokhyllan" (Policy in the bookshelf). EFN TV, run by Handelsbanken, has recently interviewed Mårten Blix about digitization and the former TV journalist Morgan Olofsson did the same thing in his podd För friheten! (For freedom !).

Read about IFN in English language media

At the age of 40, the likelihood is lower that women than men are CEOs for larger firms. In addition, the women have more rarely management jobs with top wage. Differences in qualifications can't explain this, as female managers are generally more qualified than men. Instead, the differences are explained by the fact that women are lagging behind in their career following the birth of a first child. This shows new research by Joacim Tåg, IFN, Matti Keloharju, Alto University, and Samuli Knupfer, BI Norwegian Business School.

In their new book, Kunskapssynen och pedagogiken (Educational Perspective and Pedagogy; Diagolos Förlag), Inger Enkvist, Magnus Henrekson, Martin Ingvar and Ingrid Wållgren explain that today's view of knowledge lacks validation in both research and demonstrated experience. At a seminar in Stockholm, three of the authors explained that teacher training and education must focus on understanding the brain mechanisms that allow us to learn new things and remember them.

Several IFN researchers have published articles in the latest issue of Ekonomisk Debatt (Economic Debate). Lars Calmfors asks "How effective is the industry's branding?". Niklas Elert, Magnus Henrekson and Mikael Stenkula present research on "Institutional reforms for a more innovative and entrepreneurial Europe" that is part of the EU project Fires. Henrik Jordahl takes on the ESO report Dags för omprövning (Time for reconsideration). A report he believes "should not be the basis for political decisions". Last but not least, Niklas Elert reviews The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard by Fredrik Erixon and Björn Weigel. Elert emphasizes "the importance of providing innovators and entrepreneurs who do not follow the norm, space to experiment".

Magnus Henrekson, IFN, was one of the commentators of the new book Högskola i otakt (University misaligned), authored by Johan Eklund and Lars Pettersson, Entreprenörskapsforum. The authors show how Sweden is increasingly educated, but its labor market is declining. This does not promote economic development. The panel discussed how important students’ choice of study and applications to university are. It is essential that students choose an education that is in demand on the labor market. "If Scania is not in Sweden in 20 years, it's not due to the tax system, but the poor educational system," said Magnus Henrekson.

On Friday Lars Calmfors, IFN and Chairman of the Swedish Labour Policy Council (AER), took part in a seminar together with Ylva Johansson (S), Minister for Employment and Integration, Mikael Sjöberg, Director General, Arbetsförmedlingen (Employment Services), Anders Forslund, Professor IFAU, and Martin Ådahl, Chief Economist, Center Party. Calmfors opened the seminar with a review of the current conditions. He explained, among other things, that Australia has a fully privatized employment agency, "which seems to have contributed to the downturn of unemployment". But, Calmfors added that there is no single reform that solves the problem of unemployment.

On Tuesday, IFN, in cooperation with Studentlitteratur (Student Literature), held a seminar called "Is research the antidote to fake news?" Magnus Henrekson, IFN, led a conversation in which Ulf Kristersson, M, explained that the political debate’s detachment from research is a problem. Simultaneously, he said that politicians often listen to what economists have to say. Marika Lindgren Åsbrink, LO, felt that both fake news and filter bubbles cause problems in the political debate. Three researchers who are also authors of the anthology Nationalekonomis frågor  (National Economics Issues), talked about their research: Johanna Möllerström, Maria Börjesson and Henrik Jordahl.

On Thursday, KvinnoKapital, a network of women working with asset management, visited IFN and listened to presentations by two IFN researchers. Björn Hinnerich talked about the study "Gender Quotas in the Board Room and Firm Performance: Evidence from a Credible Threat in Sweden". The researchers have concluded that the threat of gender quotas in boards of larger Swedish corporations gave effect. The number of women has increased in the boards and also corporate profits. Joacim Tåg presented an ongoing study of why so few women become CEOs in large Swedish firms. It turns out to be difficult for women, but not for men, to combine family and a senior career. The study is published in the coming weeks.

On Wednesday, the autumn's first academic seminar was held at IFN. The institute was visited by Professor Per Pettersson-Lidbom from Stockholm University. He presented the paper "Political Power, Resistance to Technological Change and Economic Development: Evidence from the 19th Century Sweden". The study is authored in cooperation with Björn Tyrefors Hinnerich, IFN, and Erik Lindgren. The researchers are studying the importance of political institutions for economic growth.

I have worked in corporate before but I like this better, said Rachael Ahn about working as a research assistant at IFN during the summer. ”The work here has been challenging but not stressful. In corporate it is the other way around”. Joel Gunnarsson agreed. He applied for the summer job at IFN as a way of finding out what it is like to be a researcher. And what is his conclusion? “I will possibly be a researcher”, he said.

The researchers find in this study that legal recognition of partnership, marriage and adoption rights, as well as an equal age of consent, relate positively to general life satisfaction. Consequently, same-sex marriage and similar reforms come at no “welfare” cost to society at large – if anything, the opposite appears to hold. They further build on previous research showing positive effects of economic freedom on happiness and on tolerance towards gay people and interact our rights measure with economic freedom. This reveals that the positive effect on general happiness of equal rights mainly appears in countries with low economic freedom. This likely follows because minority rights are perceived to indicate openness to much-desired reforms in other areas.