Publications

This paper examines the impact of a Swedish policy allowing manufacturing firms to influence the curricula of local educational institutions. Our analysis shows that the program has contributed to a s…

This paper critically evaluates the European Union’s shift towards large-scale green industrial policies. It highlights the risks of government-directed resource allocation, such as inefficiencies, mi…

Using matched employer–employee data, we investigate the influence of human capital inputs on firm productivity. Several variables are used to measure firms’ access to skilled labor, such as their sha…

Uncertainty affects people in various ways. It is frequently found to hinder investment and production in the economic sphere. In this study, we examine the empirical relationship between uncertainty…

The rapid rise of e-scooters (electric scooters) in cities around the world, boosted by the introduction of shared e-scooter services has visibly reshaped the way people move around cities, sparking b…

We provide a critical analysis of the adoption of the US ‘top-five model’ by European economics academia. This model prioritizes publications in five elite journals, heavily influencing the career tra…

Understanding the consequences and recovery for countries hit by adverse national events such as political crises is central to understanding long-run development dynamics. Utilizing the Coleman boat…

The various form of pattern bargaining with manufacturing, as representative of the tradables sector, deciding the norm for wage increases in the Nordic countries are reviewed. This form of bargaining…

We document that large cities were instrumental in shaping women’s work and family outcomes in the early 20th century. We focus on migrants to Stockholm, Sweden’s largest city, using representative, l…

We exploit education reforms in Sweden and other European countries to estimate the causal effects of longer and modernized compulsory education on civic engagement. In most countries, compulsory educ…

The neo-Schumpeterian growth models, which appeared in the early 1990s, have ostensibly reintroduced the entrepreneur into mainstream growth theory. However, we show that by ignoring genuine uncertain…

This paper examines the long-term effects of early sports selection using a regression discontinuity design. I show that Swedish track and field athletes who qualified for a one-time appearance with t…

The power exchange and the real-time markets used by the system operator differ in how system constraints are managed. This can result in regulatory arbitrage, which can increase consumer costs, incre…

We document the socioeconomics of wind power expansion in Sweden using two metrics. First, we compute the difference in socioeconomic status (SES) between residents exposed to wind power (0-2 km from…

We analyze the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the partial military mobilization, and the Wagner Group rebellion on a broad set of sentiments in the Russian population, using the exogenous ti…

We estimate the causal effects of parental incarceration on children’s short- and long-run outcomes using administrative data from Sweden. Our empirical strategy exploits exogenous variation in parent…

Electronic monitoring (EM) has emerged as a popular tool for curbing the growth of large prison populations. Evidence on the causal effects of EM on criminal recidivism is, however, limited, and it is…

The increasing electoral success of populist radical-right parties poses a significant challenge to established political parties in Western democracies. While mainstream parties often maintain a poli…

This paper presents evidence that anonymous grading benefits female university students based on a university-wide reform. Female grades improve by 0.04-0.06 standard deviations relative to males, wit…

Quasi-markets in the provision of public services are increasingly common but also highly contested. We formulate a conceptual framework based on economic theory to describe how quasi-markets differ f…

Borrowing ideas from the medical sciences, we propose tentative guidelines for reliable causal inferences that cover aspects related to both the study itself and its fit with background knowledge. We…

We study responsiveness of owner-managed companies to a corporate income tax kink using Dutch tax records linking firms to their owners. The corporate taxable income elasticity (CETI) is 0.08, but tax…

This paper examines long-term trends in aggregate wealth and inheritance and in their distributions, focusing on developed economies. A key stylized fact is that wealth is less equally distributed tha…

This chapter examines the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation for the taxation of labor and capital in advanced economies. It synthesizes empirical evidence on worker displacem…

Startups face a trade-off between short-term profitability versus long-term growth. Their cash flows are said to follow a so-called J-curve. The shape of the curve depends on investor tolerance for pr…

The discussion of the growth consequences of socialism has fulminated for a century, sparked off by the Calculation Debate in the 1920s and 30s, and has concerned the performance of the Soviet Union i…

This paper investigates the role of individualism in explaining cross-country differences in working from home (WFH). Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) of the United States and the E…

We examine immigrant self-employment in Sweden during 2011–2021 – a turbulent decade with a large influx of refugees into the country and the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Four outcome var…

Protecting biodiversity will require the phase-out of harmful production at a large scale. However, some of these stranded investments will be foreign-owned, and can therefore be protected by the more…

Aging populations strain pension systems, prompting policymakers to introduce partial retirement schemes to incentivize workers to retire later. I study the impact of introducing partial retirement wi…

This paper studies how a special wage increase for assistant nurses in Sweden affected income and employment. Workers in the public sector receive wages based on negotiations between unions and employ…

We study how financing constraints affect the cash holdings of small and medium-sized enterprises. There has been little empirical work on this topic, even though these firms often face financial cons…

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing the revenue, efficiency and social welfare implications of top income taxation. It generalizes the Saez (2001) formula for the optimal top t…

Populist parties have grown rapidly in popularity in most European countries, and are increasingly common in government coalitions. Analyzing 183 populist parties in 33 European countries from 1980 to…

This paper examines the electoral impact of increased foreign tourism, using data from Croatia. Exploiting exogenous variation in travel times to coastal municipalities from improved road infrastructu…

Many countries have implemented quasi-markets to enhance entrepreneurship and innovation in welfare service provision. However, the benefits have generally been limited; this can also be observed in S…

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the generational wealth transfer within Sweden’s public pay-as-you-go pension system introduced in 1960. Using extensive administrative registers, the p…

Our use of longitudinal register data combined with a unique survey allows us to offer a more comprehensive picture of rural self-employment than in previous studies. We find that self-employed in rur…

Academic freedom is a cornerstone of modern academic life. It is not only implied by basic liberal principles but also contributes to scientific progress and economic growth. It is therefore important…

We evaluate a non-targeted summer youth employment program (SYEP) for high school students aged 16–19 in Stockholm, Sweden, where public sector job offers were as good as randomly assigned. In contras…

The notion that society should be organized around large so-called missions has gained momentum in public debate, and the reemergence of active industrial policy across the world has been inspired by…

The net-zero agreement on carbon emission from Paris 2015 gives a key role to fossil-free energy technologies with an expected multifold growth rate over the coming decades, when successively replacin…

The New Keynesian model, augmented with the working capital channel, predicts that a rise in the policy rate causes firms that use more working capital to increase their prices more, and that the pass…

We study commercialization of personal data through personalized advertising by a content platform. Content consumption generates productive data about consumer preferences. The firm invests in artifi…

This study evaluated discrimination against children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) in Swedish sports clubs through a field experiment. Two fictitious fathers sent emails to 193 top-division clu…

A common claim holds that investment treaties reduce the willingness of host countries to regulate foreign-owned, environmentally-stranded, investments. A counter-argument is that the treaties can yie…

This paper integrates findings from several different case studies on Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies (MOIPs) and makes use of existing literature to briefly describe three other missions: The Wa…

Many insolvency systems focus on restructuring financial liabilities, and ignore operational liabilities such as leases and long-termsupplier contracts. We model the U.S. option to reject such contrac…

We investigate the impact of attending a free school in England – that is, a new start-up school that enjoys considerable autonomy while remaining in the state sector. We analyse the effects of two se…

Private equity buyouts have sparked debates among labor unions and worker representatives on how they affect workers. This chapter provides an overview of academic evidence on how private equity buyou…

Mission-oriented innovation policies are becoming increasingly popular among policymakers and scholars. We maintain that these policies are based on an overly mechanistic view of innovation and econom…

The association between freedom of expression – freedom of speech and the freedom of the media – and social conflict is theoretically ambiguous and politically highly contested. On one side of the deb…

This paper analyses the effects of independent-school competition on Sweden’s performance in TIMSS, an international low-stakes test in mathematics and science among students in year 8. Exploiting var…

There is widespread concern, especially in certain feminist circles, that a market-oriented economic system, or capitalism, disfavors women. This could take many forms, such as lower wages for the sam…

This study estimates the impact of carbon pricing on international trade in equipment used in the combustion of fossil fuels during the period 1995–2021. Using detailed data on bilateral trade combine…

This paper examines the European Union's changing perspective on globalization, reflecting a shift from its traditionally open, rules-based trade policy. The rise of internal protectionist measures, c…

Can competition and the existence of profit-seeking actors in the school market improve educational quality? To see cost-efficient, long-term improvements, we identify the school system’s capacity for…

Local resistance towards wind power is a central challenge for the energy transition, implying that legally imposed compensation schemes for nearby residents may become prevalent in the near future. I…

The European Union (EU) is becoming more inward looking and more hesitant towards globalization. This paper examines recent transformations in EU's economic policies, with a focus on international tra…

The paper acknowledges the changed geopolitical map and the new adjacent political mindset and examines the current state of the relationship between MNEs and governments/central banks. The focus is o…

Green parties are commonly seen as strong proponents of wind power. This paper presents an alternative view, examining data from the highly decentralized institutional setup in Sweden where approval o…

This paper investigates the impact of financial constraints on firms’ inventory holdings, an area of significant interest given that inventories are volatile over the business cycle. I use detailed da…

This paper examines the identity and origins of Swedish inventors prior to World War I drawing on the universe of patent records linked to census data. We document that the rise of innovation during S…

We study the heterogeneity of family firms using registry data on all private firms in Sweden. We restrict our sample to firms with at least one employee, and we define a family firm as a firm where t…

We study multi-unit auctions where bidders have single-unit demand and asymmetric information. For symmetric equilibria, we identify circumstances where uniform-pricing is better for the auctioneer th…

We investigate the returns to cognitive ability in the labor and capital markets. Using population-wide Swedish military enlistment data and administrative tax records, we find that cognitive ability…

In this study, we examine the relationship between within-firm pay inequality and employee productivity. We use hand-collected data on a sample of S&P 1500 companies from 2018-2022 and find a conc…

Is technology or trade driving increases in wage inequality? We propose that technology interacts with trade in the form of foreign direct investments to widen domestic wage inequality. We show that f…

I study how firms adapt to exogenous changes in labor costs induced by collective bargaining agreements. I use data on collective bargaining agreements in Sweden and study the impact of the nationwide…

Social trust is typically measured using surveys that ask people if they agree that most people can be trusted. A potential problem is that falling response rates plague these surveys. If non-response…

The application of machine learning (ML) to big data has become increasingly important. We propose a model where firms have access to the same ML, but incumbents have access to historical data. We sho…

This paper explores the influence of experience in foreign-owned firms on worker mobility, with a focus on Swedish companies acquired by foreign multinationals. We posit that international experience,…

We study the impact of financing constraints on corporate risk management. Using data on credit scores matched with unique information on firm level commercial insurance purchases, we find that financ…

This paper investigates the impact of automation on intergenerational income mobility. Using Swedish register data from 1985 to 2019, we analyze how parental exposure to robots at the occupational lev…

Developing countries have 1300+ investment treaties with developed countries. Investment treaties are often alleged to constrain developing country climate policies. This paper examines four treaty re…

This paper explores whether coups cause increased crisis risk, and if some types of coups are associated with stronger risk. I use a worldwide sample with data on more than 1200 onsets of economic cri…

Motivated by a recent setback in the fight against child malnutrition, this study explores whether aid projects help to reduce stunting, or impaired growth, among children in the local area. Focusing…

We highlight a new factor behind integration: tolerance in the immigrants’ background culture. We hypothesize that it is easier to partake of economic, civic-political, and social life in a new countr…

The Houtman-Maks index is a measure of the size of a violation of utility maximizing (i.e., rational) behavior. This note introduces the Stata command hmindex, which calculates the Houtman-Maks index…

In a representative democracy politicians should either implement policies that voters want or policies that politicians believe are in voters long-term interest, even if voters currently oppose them.…

The creation and scaling of startups are inherently linked to risk-taking, with various types of owners handling these risks differently. This paper investigates the influence of an active venture cap…

Many governments introduced temporary adjustments to counter the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the importance of already existing government transfers and pandemi…

An increasing number of researchers, whether in Sweden, Slovakia, Italy, Japan, Brazil, or many other places, are using English in their discourse, written or oral, despite working in a place where th…

Based on a review of 700+ peer-reviewed articles since 1990, identified using text mining methodology and supervised machine learning, we analyze how neo-Schumpeterian growth theorists relate to the e…

We present estimates of the number of refugees expected to flee Ukraine and to which countries they are expected to migrate based on migration preferences data from the Gallup World Poll. This is impo…

Chinese investment abroad has grown significantly in connection with the Belt and Road Initiative. This article tries to answer two questions: first, what considerations gave birth to the BRI? And sec…

The European Commission’s Directive on minimum wages aims to ensure an adequate minimum wage for all workers in the Union and thereby counteract poverty among the low paid. This article examines the u…

In this paper, we study the link between globalization of firms and gender inequality. Specifically, we examine how the need for interpersonal contacts in trade and gender-specific differences in nego…

Much political conflict in the world revolves around the issue of how much freedom to accord people. Liberal democracies are characterized by, e.g., the rule of law and a strong protection of civil ri…

We study the mental health of PhD students in Sweden using comprehensive administrative data on prescriptions, specialist care visits, hospitalizations, and causes of death. We find that about 7% (5%)…

This study presents an improvement of the King-Fullerton framework for calculating the marginal effective tax rate (METR) for active owners of closely held corporations in a dual income tax system wit…

In this paper, we study foreign ownership as a vehicle for transferring gender norms across international borders. Specifically, we analyze how the wage differential between men and women in Swedish f…

This essay argues that the most crucial institution of any school system is the embraced view of knowledge—from which virtually all other aspects of a school are derived: the content of its curricula,…

We investigate the effect of technology adoption on competition by leveraging aunique dataset on production, costs, and asset characteristics for North Sea upstream oil & gas companies. Relying on…

The mixed-demand model allows for very flexible specification of what should be considered endogenous and exogenous in demand system estimation. This paper introduces a revealed preference framework t…

The institutional literature suggests that long-term tax incentives are crucial for entrepreneurs, but studies on this topic are hampered by theoretical and empirical problems related to how to define…

We analyze changes in the willingness to substitute from prescribed pharmaceuticals to more affordable generic equivalents in response to the first experience with a substitution. Using Swedish indivi…

We develop a novel measure of job-worker allocation quality (JAQ) by exploiting employer-employee data with machine learning techniques. Based on our measure, the quality of job-worker matching correl…

Formal institutions, e.g., regulations, are considered crucial determinants of entrepreneurship, but what enables regulatory change when there is a regulatory void, meaning entrepreneurship clashes wi…

We study shareholder support for corporate board nominees before and after the 2018 California gender quota. Pre-quota, new female nominees received greater support than new male nominees, consistent…