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"As a first big step to saving cohesion within the EU, national politicians must learn to give recognition to the EU for success and not, as the moment itself takes the credit and then blame all the hard-earned decisions on the EU," summarizes the debate on the EU book, Oxelheim summarizes the debate and the return of the nation-state (the 22nd year of Europaperspektiv) on Wednesday was discussed in Brussels. This took place at the Swedish Permanent Representation to the EU with the participation of, among others, trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström.

Research by Petra Persson, Stanford University and IFN, Maria Polyakova and Yiqun Chen, also active at Stanford, shows that people with access to informal health expertise through a family member who works as a doctor or nurse are 10 percent more likely to become 80 years or older. They are also significantly less likely to have chronic lifestyle-related diseases such as heart attacks, heart failure, and diabetes. The study has been published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and also as a working paper at IFN.

Over the years many guests have visited IFN and spent some time at the Institute. This is a way to exchange ideas with researchers working in other countries and to collaborate on projects. Ludek Kouba is a visitor of IFN during spring and summer of 2019. He is an associate professor at the Department of Economics at Mendel University in Brno in the Czech Republic. Also, Kouba has a part-time engagement at the University of Economics in Prague where he gives lectures on institutional economics.

“What I believe is missing in Italy is not the reforms, but believing in the reforms”, said Guiseppe Bertola, University of Turin, when presenting this years' EEAG Report on a seminar in Stockholm. He added that "the solution is not to do the reforms that Germany is doing, it’s not to become Danish and it’s not to do what you did when the country did well. The solution is to understand the surrounding”. Karolina Ekholm, professor in international economics, and  Mauro Gozzo, chairman of the Economic Council of Swedish Industry, commented on the report. "Sweden is seen as one of the good guys, and I do not like this narrative since it divides up Europe into south and north,” explained Ekholm. Mauro Gozzo agreed.

The 2019 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research goes to Boyan Jovanovic, Professor of Economics, New York University. Jovanovic is awarded for his pioneering research on the competitive dynamics between incumbent firms and new ventures, entrepreneurial learning and selection processes. The Global Award is the foremost international award in entrepreneurship research with a prize sum of € 100,000.

Finally, you might say, the highly acclaimed book Kunskapssynen och pedagogiken (Knowledge and the pedagogy) (Dialogos Bokförlag) can be downloaded online. The book, with Professor Magnus Henrekson as editor, was launched in  2017 and Magnus Henrekson has since that time presented it at numerous seminars, conferences, and meetings. The most common reaction has been, he says, either that "you explain something I knew but wasn't able to put words on" or skepticism and surprise, people saying that "this can't be true, it is far from common sense and is not logical."
 

On Monday, Joakim Jansson, Linnaeus University and affiliated with IFN, presented research on hatred online, at a brown bag seminar at IFN. Jansson, together with Emma von Essen, is researching the connection between anonymity and hate towards feminists and foreigners spread online. They find that when anonymity is weakened, the hate generally subsides, including hatred towards foreigners.

Staffan Bohman will be the new chairman of the board of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics, IFN. He succeeds Michael Treschow, who has been chairman 2011–2018.

In early February IFN invited PhD students and students in their final year of the master program in economics to an Open House. The students came from Uppsala University, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm University, Jönköping International Business School, University of Gothenburg and Lund University. Following a number of presentations of the Institute and research projects the students mingled with researchers and research assistants learing more about what it's like to be a researcher.

On Tuesday, Mårten Blix, IFN, presented research on digitalization in healthcare to the Committee on Social Insurance in Swedish Parliament. Blix, together with Allan Gustafsson, was invited to talk about their findings and to answer the members' questions. Both Blix and Gustafsson are authors of a ESO reports on digitalization within healthcare.

“Many small and shrinking municipalities are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with their welfare assignment”, says Eva Mörk, Uppsala University, Gissur Ó Erlingsson, Linköping University, and Lovisa Persson, IFN, in the SNS Konjunkturrådsrapport 2019. They advocate, among other things, that asymmetric division of responsibility is studied, i.e., that certain areas of responsibility are lifted away from smaller municipalities. The reason is that the researchers have found that the difference is growing between cities and rural areas. "The students in big cities generally perform better than those in a remote rural area," Lovisa Persson explained. As for elderly care, however, the researchers do not see any systematic difference.

On Monday, the Centre for Business and Policy Studies SNS, organized a seminar on basic income, also called citizen's salary (medborgarlön). Andreas Bergh, IFN and Lund University, presented the background to the public debate and the various arguments – for and against. Minna Ylikännö, a researcher at the Finnish Social Security Administration, presented a Finnish experiment with basic income (in the case of unemployment) recently concluded but still not evaluated. Bergh suggested that a person who thinks that basic income is something useful should embrace “muddling through”, that is, change today's systems step by step by way of trivial reforms.

Joacim Tåg, IFN, commented, at an SNS seminar, on a presentation by Marianne Bertrand, professor at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Bertrand presented research on the underlying causes for why women are still underrepresented amongst high-income earners despite the progress in equality of the genders in several other aspects. 

“Ethnic segregation has increased in Sweden since the 1990’s but so has the share of self-employment among immigrants”, said Mats Hammarstedt, Linnéuns University and affiliated researcher to IFN, at the seminar "Segregation and refugees’ entrepreneurship" (SNS). Henrik Andersson, Uppsala University, presented a study on the effects of ethnic segregation on self-employment. Andersson finds in his study that refugees that were placed in municipalities with a greater share of self-employed individuals from the same country of origin as themselves were more likely to become self-employed.

The ESO-report (The Expert Group on Public Economics) Operation digitalisering (Operation digitalization), by Mårten Blix, IFN, and Charlotta Lavay, Lund University, was presented at a seminar. The authors write about digitalization in the health care sector and demand a more pragmatic view on the topic. While many individuals can already today seek health care (advice) via the internet and thereby become better informed patients, this does not necessarily imply that health care has become less expensive for society, explained Blix. Having said that, Blix also mentioned results from an American study that shows that well-informed patients are easier to treat and reduce the costs of health care by 20 percent.

Together with the publisher Dialogos, IFN arranged a seminar about the book “How can more enter the labor market? (Hur ska fler komma in på arbetsmarknaden?). Professor Lars Calmfors, who is one of the authors of the book, was interviewed by the journalist Cecilia Garme. The interview revolved mainly around problems of integrating foreign-born individuals in the Swedish labor market. “Employment rates are lower for foreign-born individuals”, said Calmfors. He explained that there is a need for more simple jobs with lower wages.

The Swedish Research Council and the Institute for Future Studies arranged the public seminar “What happens when the rich become richer?” (Vad händer när de rika blir rikare?). One of the participants was the IFN-researcher Professor Daniel Waldenström. His presentation contained topics such as wealth growth in Sweden, redistribution and its implications for capital income taxation. Waldenström showed that national wealth has increased significantly in recent decades and that the increase was from the private sector. He explained that due to noisy micro-data “we cannot with certainty say whether wealth inequality has increased in Sweden”, but preliminary estimates indicate that no major changes have happened.

Mikael Elinder, Uppsala University and affiliated to IFN, and Johannes Hagen, Jönköping International Business School, presented their report Den komplexa tjänsterapporten (SNS). Individuals report that the occupational pension system is difficult to understand, explained Elinder. Few people understand this specific part of the pension system. One fourth of the respondents do not even know if they have an occupational pension plan. In the report, Elinder and Hagen present seven ideas for how the pension system can be simplified, one of which is to upgrade the site Minpension.se.

 Andreas Bergh, IFN and Lund University, was one of the speakers when the think tank Timbro celebrated its 40th anniversary at the Modern Museum in Stockholm. The subject was the growing sharing economy. "The size of the sharing economy in one country depends mostly on the speed of the internet," explained Bergh, one of the researchers behind the Sharing Economy Index (TSEI), a report on the global size of the divisional economy.