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"My guess is that we will see a slight improvement in the Swedish results," says Professor Magnus Henrekson in an interview in today's Dagens Samhälle with regard to the Pisa study, which will be presented on Tuesday. Should this be the case, he says, we still can not rest on our laurels. "We really can not be satisfied with a minor improvement." He sums up negative trends in the Swedish school system: 1) The resistance to measuring knowledge 2) The lack of education that allow students sufficient factual basis to reflect and analyze 3) That municipal governments are the principals of schools 4) That both privatly owned and publicly run schools are focusing on supplying students with high grades.

Three IFN researchers participated in SvD Financial Forum in Stockholm, November 30. Lars Calmfors introduced a section on Migration and economic growth. He explained that a survey of AER shows that employers would hire for low-level jobs if the pay were substantially lower than the current minimum wage – maybe SEK 14–15000. Following the presentation by Calmfors Andreas Bergh, IFN, and Lund University, debated integration of immigration with Tino Sanandaji, Stockholm School of Economics. Bergh said that Sweden could certainly cope with a large immigration if the wage distribution is allowed to increase. In a separate section Mårten Blix, IFN, spoke on the impact of digitization in the labor market. He argued that digitization challenges the Swedish welfare model and he fears an increase in job polarization.

What can we learn from the research on automation and digitalization? This question was answered at a seminar organized by IFN on Monday. Keynote speaker was Professor Melanie Arntz, ZEW in Mannheim and Heidelberg University. She has studied the effects of automation on labor markets in the OECD. Arntz explained that the discussion is often too doom-laden. From IFN Professor Lars Persson and Ph.D. Mårten Blix presented their research in the field. In a panel, chaired by digitization expert Sara Öhrvall, Annika Winsth, chief economist Nordea, also participated.

Mats Isaksson, head of the corporate affairs division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), visited on Thursday IFN for a presentation of the organization. The questions were many posed by the attending researchers, concerning everything from recommendations made by the OECD and a firm's power of innovation to the allocation of responsibility in a business as well as IPOs.

Many IFN researchers have a great interest in education policy. Recently a study by Professor Magnus Henrekson, IFN, and Ph.D. student Sebastian Jävervall was showing that Swedish "school results are dropping for both the best and the worst students." The study was cited by a number of editorial writers, including Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Sydsvenskan. Henrik Jordahl, IFN, is the author of several reports on the school system, among these a study about municipalities’ systematic work to measure quality, which "appears to be neglected in comparison to for profit schools that have a more streamlined approach". Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, affiliated to the IFN, is the most prolific school debater. His latest report is called “Regulation and Funding of Independent Schools: Lessons from Sweden” (Fraser Institute, Canada, 2016).

Why didn’t the polls predict Donald Trump's election victory? Richard Öhrvall, IFN and Linköping University, was interviewed in a number of papers answering this question. To Dagens Nyheter he explained that focus of the US election has been on analysis of combinations of opinion polls, rather than individual polls. The incentive to make reliable but more expensive opinion polls has thus been weak. Öhrvall was also interviewed in Metro and Forskning & Framsteg. To the latter, he explained that "the evidence suggests that those with unconventional positions are less inclined to tell about them in the polls."

Professor Yves Zenou, affiliated to IFN and at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, has been elected Fellow of the Econometric Society. Since previously Assar Lindbeck, IFN and Stockholm University, is a Fellow. The Econometric Society is an international society of academic economists interested in applying statistical tools to their field. The organization publishes three scientific journals: Econometrica, Quantitative Economics and Theoretical Economics.

Professor Saras D. Sarasvathy, University of Virginia, held this year's Swedish, Schumpeter Lecture on the subject  "Two Decades of effectuation Research: Implications for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Policy". Professor Magnus Henrekson, IFN commented. "We should prepare people in Sweden better for the kind of entrepreneurship that professor Sarasvathy is talking about," he explained. The panel included Cecilia Bergh, founder and CEO of Mando Group. The discussion was moderated by Professor Johan Eklund, Entrepreneurship Forum (Entreprenörskapsforum).

Assar Lindbeck, IFN and Stockholm University, has been awarded the Global Economy Prize 2017. The prize is awarded by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The Prize Committee consists mostly of former winners of the Global Economy Prize, of which the majority have also been awarded the Nobel Prize. The Global Economy Prize highlights the achievements of "those who view globalization as an opportunity to tap our creative potential. The prize winners recognize that our standard of living can be protected only through free market activity itself."

Richard Öhrvall, IFN and Linköping University, will present his research during this year's Göteborg Book Fair on September 22. Presentations will be made in the Forskartorget and in the Linköping University booth. Who are the voters in elections? Do parents, upbringing, school, and friends affect the likelihood that you will get involved in politics? These are some of the questions Öhrvall will answer.

An op-ed by Magnus Henrekson and Henrik Jordahl, IFN, is published in Dagens Industri. The basis for the article is the proposal to limit profit to 8 percent of capital invested in tax financed services, i.e. education, healthcare and so on. Henrekson and Jordahl found several errors with Joachim Landström’s analysis of the matter, explaining that "a reasonable mandate would be to investigate whether a profit control is at all needed in tax financed services (and whether it is consistent with the Swedish Constitution and the European legislation Sweden is subject to)."

On Friday, September 2 well-known economist Deirdre McCloskey, professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, opened a seminar entitled "The idea is the idea of growth". Bettina Kashefi, chief economist at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, and Ola Pettersson, chief economist at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, participated in the subsequent panel. Professor McCloskey spoke about her book Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World. She explained how ideas – liberal ideas – are the basis of economic growth.

Per Hjertstrand, IFN, has been appointed associate editor of Macroeconomic Dynamics, published by Cambridge Journals. The journal is a renowned specialized periodical in macroeconomics that publishes theoretical, empirical and quantitative research. "As an associate editor, I help decide who will review the texts sent to the journal," explains Hjertstrand. At the next stage, he is also involved in deciding which articles are eventually published.

Andreas Bergh, IFN, and Lund University, has on behalf of the think tank Fores written the report Hela staden – varför vinner vi inte (mer) på invandringen? (The entire town - why don’t we gain (more) from the immigration?). The report was presented at a seminar on Wednesday. Bergh explained that the major stumbling blocks for immigrants to enter the labor market is inflexible job market institutions (collective agreement between trade unions and employers, as well as high minimum wages) and that Sweden, so far, has advocated  integration above ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown in New York.
 

Andreas Bergh, IFN, Gissur Ó Erlingsson, Linköping University, Mats Sjölin Linné University, and Richard Öhrvall, IFN, are the authors a a new book:  A Clean House? Studies of Corruption in Sweden (Nordic Academic Press 2016). The researchers describe how countries typically viewed as low-corruption states can have particular problems that should not be underestimated nor neglected. By revealing causes, scope and consequences of the corruption in Sweden, the authors point out shortcomings in the international evaluations of corruption.

Matilda Orth, IFN, and Florin Maican, affiliated to IFN, have been awarded The International Journal of Industrial Organization's Best Paper Award 2016. This prize is awarded to the best two papers published each year. The papers are selected by the editorial board of the journal. "A dynamic analysis of entry regulations and productivity in retail trade", by Orth and Maican, was published in May 2015.

In a forthcoming report presented by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, Henrik Jordahl, IFN, is comparing the systematic quality work of the three largest private school corporations and three municipalities of comparable size. In Dagens Nyheter Jordahl writes: "The municipalities systematic quality work, in this comparison, appears as neglected." Henrik Jordahl explains that improved systematic quality work in the municipalities "would be a welcome step in the right direction." He concludes: ”To attack private schools profits and dividends will prove futile. The Swedish education crisis can not be met by an ideological shot in the dark.”

Associate Professor Therese Nilsson, IFN and Lund University, together with Professors Martin Karlsson, University of Duisburg-Essen and Sonia Bhalotra, University of Essex, has studied the introduction of a free infant care program introduced on a trial basis in Sweden in the 1930s. The program provided information, support and monitoring of infants. The research shows that the care significantly improved health. The result indicates the importance of infant care to combat sickness among young children and ill health later in life. Therese Nilsson explains that the children who received the free care lived longer and the risk was reduced of being diagnosed with cancer decades later.

Selling to incumbent firms encourage creators to focus on high-quality research projects, write Pehr-Johan Norbäck, Lars Persson and Roger Svensson in a blog post for the London School of Economics' Business Review. The research results "suggest that industry policies that disfavour innovation for sale over innovation for entry may be harmful," writes Norbäck, Persson and Svensson. They propose policies to improve the merger and acquisition market: "... making the tax system neutral between keeping and selling a firm, or improving the legal system to reduce the transaction costs associated with acquisitions in order to ensure a bidding competition over target firms".