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Richard Öhrvall, IFN, has received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Linköping University. “It’s fun to present what I have spent much of my time on these past few years.” In his dissertation, Growing into voting- Election turnout among young people and habit formation, Öhrvall concludes that it is not necessary for future election participation that young individuals vote in the elections immediately following their 18th birthday, as previously thought. This implies that lowering the voting age most plausibly won’t result in higher election turnout, even in the long run.

In the October issue of the Journal of Political Economy an article is published by Assar Lindbeck, IFN and Stockholm University, and Mats Persson, Stockholm University: "Social Norms in Social Insurance". JPE is one of the five top journals in the field of economics, where it is extremely challenging to be published. "It is unique to publish new research in any of these journals at the age of 88," says Professor Magnus Henrekson, CEO of IFN. By comparison, it can be mentioned that among the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, so far, the oldest to publish original research as a full-length article in a top-five journal, is Vernon Smith. At the time, he was 81.

“Digitalization and the welfare state” was the topic of a presentation held by Mårten Blix, IFN, for DNB Bank during the tennis tournament Stockholm Open. Mårten Blix described how digitalization might catalyze economic polarization in society. To conclude, Blix gave his view on Sweden’s capability to implement large-scale structural reforms: Will Sweden manage to carry through large-scale structural changes in the absence of a crisis? That remains to be seen, said, Blix. Finally, he compared the 1990’s and today regarding opportunities to reform society.

Most people want more care and who is to say that this is wrong without explaining why today's level is the valid one, writes Mårten Blix, IFN, and Johanna Jeansson, Dagens Industri, in a blog on the Forum for Health Policy. In this perspective, digital care can be appreciated as a positive innovation: "To the extent that patients choose digital care via a video call instead of visiting a healthcare center, there are several benefits to society. Patients will not need to travel, the doctor's time can be used more efficiently and the risk of infection from a physical visit to a healthcare center is avoided."

During the annual conference of the Swedish Economics Association (Nationalekonomiska föreningen), which this year was organized by the Business School at Linnaeus University in Växjö, the Assar Lindbeck medal was presented. Magnus Henrekson, IFN, awarded the medal to Petter Lundborg, Lund University. Assar Lindbeck himself was also attending the conference and the award ceremony. An additional number of IFN researchers participate by presenting and commenting on research.

Academic seminars are held at IFN every Wednesday, where researchers from IFN and other institutes and universities present their current work. So-called brown bag seminars are also organized. Here, research is presented at an earlier stage. Brown bag seminars are more informal meetings held at lunchtime. Participants usually bring their own lunch, often in a brown paper bag (in the US), and hence the name. The photo shows Karin Edmark, Stockholm University and affiliated to IFN, who recently presented research from the field of education at a brown bag seminar.

On Tuesday, Magnus Henrekson presented a report at the The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, IVA. Together with Sebastian Jävervall, PhD student at Uppsala University, he has authored the report "Swedish school achievements are falling – what do we know?" Magnus Henrekson participated via link from Värnamo where the IFN board was visiting a number of businesses. The event and panel discussion at IVA was also attended by State Secretary Erik Nilsson, Per Kornhall, author and educational expert, and Pam Fredman, Chancellor at University of Gothenburg.

IVA's Chairman Leif Johansson, President of Ericsson and AstraZeneca, opened the seminar.

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Roger Svensson, IFN, participated on Friday in a panel discussing Anders Gustafsson's dissertation "Industrial Policy: Political Considerations, Payoffs, and Peculiar Incentives." The seminar was organized by Ratio. "We have to pull down on selective programs," said Roger Svensson. He advocated a bottom-up-perspective, that is, today's financial support is replaced with general tax incentives so that more people can start innovative projects in companies. "Or give tax incentives for individuals to invest in unlisted companies, like in Britain."

An alumni network for doctoral students affiliated with IFN and research assistants at the institute recently held a first event. Richard Öhrvall, IFN, who is pursuing a doctorate in political science at Linköping University, presented the results from the recent election and participants discussed possibilities and risks with the even electoral outcome. On election day, Richard commented the election from a local perspective as a part of an expert panel on TV2. The alumni event was opened by Simon Ek, PhD student at Uppsala University, together with Magnus Henrekson and Lars Persson, IFN. After the presentation on the 2018 election, discussions and networking continued over a dinner at the institute.

Magnus Henrekson and Johan Wennström, IFN, write today in the popular science network Quillette that the root cause of the problems in Swedish school "is the curriculum that rejects subject knowledge, gives students excessive responsibility and weakens the role of teacher." When the knowledge vision was combined with market reforms, incentives were created to compete with nothing but knowledge ". Tyler Cowen, professor at George Mason University, also writes about the current study by Henrekson and Wennström. On Facebook, the Quillette article has been shared almost 1,500 times (19th September 2018).

The Alexander Gerschenkron Prize 2018 is awarded to Erik Prawitz, IFN, for the best dissertation in the economic history of an area outside of the United States or Canada. The prize is awarded by the Economic History Association and was announced during the weekend. The title of Prawitz's thesis was On the Move: Essays on the Economic and Political Development of Sweden, including Swedish mass migration to the US. He is the first Swede to receive the prize.

In a new study Fredrik Heyman, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson, IFN, investigates how product market competition and gender-specific management career hurdles affect the gender wage gap for managers.  The paper is presented in a blog post at University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The findings suggest that increased product market competition may not only boost the wages of female managers but also improve overall efficiency.

Timbro has for the first time presented The Sharing Economy Index (TSEI), a report on the size of the global sharing economy. The index has been developed by a group of researchers, including Andreas Bergh, IFN and Lund University. The researchers have analyzed how much Internet traffic companies with share-based services have. The researchers have also counted the number of activities by suppliers like Airbnb and HomeAway across the world. A total of 286 companies have been mapped.

Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, writes a column in the New York Times about research by David Cesarini, New York University and affiliated to IFN, Erik Lindqvist, Stockholm School of Economics and affiliated to IFN, and Robert Östling, Stockholm University. They show that lottery winners live a happier life, contrary to what many previously believed. Cesarini explains that there is a “widespread misperception that science has proved that winning the lottery often makes people miserable.” Wolfers writes that "these effects are remarkably durable. They were still evident up to two decades after a big win. (The researchers lacked the data to trace out even longer-term consequences.)"

August 17-18 IFN hosted the inaugural conference of the Nordic Initiative for Corporate Economics (NICE). NICE will organize a series of conferences to bring together leading scholars located in the Nordic countries or with Nordic. Uniting the researchers is their interest in understanding the corporation, whether this may be from the perspective of accounting, corporate finance, trade economics, labor economics, or industrial organization. 

Anonymously corrected exams result in higher grades for women than for men. This is the result of a study by researchers Björn Tyrefors, IFN, and Joakim Jansson, Stockholm University and IFN. The research also shows that the overall effect of an anonymization reform can only be partly explained by male teachers being a majority among university teachers.

Mårten Blix was on Wednesday invited to a lunch meeting organized by the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts (SFF) to talk about digitalization and the economy. Interest was great for the subject. The topic of his presentation was primarily about how digitalization affects the labor market. He spoke about the job polarization that is happening, that is, that middle-level jobs are disappearing while we can see an increase at the bottom and the top. He also defined gig work and gave a number of examples of different digital platforms and how they work.

In the process of founding Nordic Initiative for Corporate Economics, NICE, Alexander Ljungqvist and Lars Persson have coined the term “corporate economics.” When opening the conference August 17, Ljungqvist explained that “each of us here studies the corporation within the context of our various economic specialties. Our aim at this conference is to establish common ground that bridges our specialties, or what we call corporate economics". Ljungqvist said that by interacting and sharing various perspectives, it is his hope that the researchers will enrich the economic study of corporations.

Data processing is a major and central part of a researcher's everyday life, which Helena Hernnäs and Viking Waldén have learned during the summer of 2018 when they worked as research assistants at IFN. Both are happy with their time at IFN. They say that the atmosphere is open and welcoming and that they have gained good insights into what it means to be a researcher.

The study of corporations is fragmented across various branches of economics and management science (such as industrial organization, accounting, and entrepreneurship), each of which approaches the study of corporations from a different perspective. The lack of an organized way of interacting and learning from each other is perceived as an obstacle for the development of these research fields. “We aim to change this by introducing the Nordic Initiative for Corporate Economics, NICE,” said Professor Lars Persson, IFN, who in cooperation with Professor Alexander Ljungqvist, Stockholm’s School of Economics and affiliated to IFN, has instigated the new network.