Publications

We use newly compiled top income data and structural breaks techniques to estimate common trends and breaks in inequality across countries over the twentieth century. Our results both confirm earlier fi…

There are several theoretical accounts of public sector outsourcing. We note that leading theories give different predictions of the influence of political variables and test the predictions on a Swed…

The WTO leaves discretion over environmental policies to its members, but requests that a fundamental non-discrimination principle is respected: National Treatment (NT). The provision seeks to prevent…

We analyse a reform of notice periods for employer-initiated separations in Sweden, which reduced the notice periods for newly hired older workers substantially but implied minor or no changes in the…

We survey the literature on the effects of public sector outsourcing. Guided by theory, we systematically arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. Taken…

We use a Swedish sickness insurance reform to show that among married couples a partner’s benefit level affects spousal labour supply. The spousal elasticity of sick days with respect to the partner’s…

The aim of this paper is to provide a tractable model where both socialization (or network formation) and productive efforts can be analyzed simultaneously. This permits a fullfledged equilibrium/welfa…

Financial market incompleteness and (partial) segmentation of financial markets internationally may endow some firms with a financial advantage which can be exploited through foreign direct investment…

This thesis has three chapters. In the first chapter, a joint work with Magnus Henrekson, we discuss the taxation of entrepreneurial income. A review of the literature on form taxation reveals that th…

This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden’s economic and political development:• How did Sweden become rich?• What explains Sweden’s high level of income equality?• What were th…

This paper develops an improved test of economic convergence or divergence using time series methods. The usefulness of the method is illustrated in an analysis of the growth pattern between Chinese r…

This paper studies how cognitive and social skills in childhood are related to the duration of unemployment in adolescence and early adulthood. I estimate a flexible proportional hazard rate model for…

We examine the impact of cross-border acquisitions on intra-firm wage dispersion using a detailed Swedish linked employer-employee data set including data on all firms and about 50% of the Swedish lab…

We develop an urban-search model in which firms post wages. When all workers are identical, there is a unique wage in equilibrium even in the presence of search and spatial frictions. This wage is aff…

Realized capital gains are typically disregarded in the study of income inequality. We show that in the case of Sweden this severely underestimates the actual increase in inequality and, in particular…

This paper examines the effects of collectively agreed increases in real minimum wages on employment transitions and hours among manual workers in the Swedish retail sector over the period 2001–05. Th…

In this paper we outline an evolutionary framework of entrepreneurial processes where by firms are started, grow, and exit from the market. We explain the important of such a framework in explaining b…

In industries with network effects, incumbents’ installed bases create barriers to entry that discourage entrepreneurs from developing new innovations. Yet, entry is not the only commercialization rou…

The financial crisis starting in 2008 made many European countries opt for a change of exchange rate regime. The choice of price measure as an entry requirement to the European Economic and Monetary Un…

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been important in the growth and global integration of developing economies. Both Northeast and Southeast Asia, especially the latter, have been part of this develo…

The objective of this paper is to study when and how much labor supply and savings of heirs respond to inheritances. We estimate fixed effects models following direct heirs, inheriting in 2004, during…

This article surveys the literature and adds to the evidence on the impact of employment protection legislation on employment. While stringent employment protection contributes to less turnover and jo…

In a recent paper, Colombier (2009) uses a robust estimation technique and claims to find empirical evidence that government size has not been detrimental to growth for OECD countries during the 1970…

A robust positive correlation between height and intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, has been established in the literature. This paper makes several contributions toward establishing the causes of…

This paper investigates labor productivity growth and the contribution to labor productivity growth in Swedish manufacturing during the diffusion of electric motors and ICT. The paper distinguishes be…

Previous research, notably Baumol (1990), has highlighted the role of institutions in channeling entrepreneurial supply into productive, unproductive, or destructive activities. However, entrepreneurs…

In this paper, I investigate whether instead of strengthening home-based production, government R&D-subsidies can induce R&D-intensive firms to locate production abroad. Investigating firm-level…

Since the mid 1990s labor productivity growth in Sweden has been high compared to Japan, the US and the western EU-countries. While productivity growth has been rapid in manufacturing, it has been muc…

Using panel data from more than 100 countries around the world from 1988 through 2007, this paper examines the relationship between economic and social globalization and absolute income poverty ex pos…

We develop a regional model where, in the city, unemployment prevails because of too high (efficiency) wages, while, in the rural area, workers are paid at their marginal productivity. We characterize…

One of the major reasons why inventors are awarded patents by governments is they encourage R&D investments and commercialization of inventions. If the patent holder commercializes his invention,…

In recent decades immigration of workers and refugees to Europe has increased substantially, and the composition of the population in many countries has consequently become much more heterogeneous in…

This paper presents results from a laboratory experiment studying the channels through which different law enforcement strategies deter cartel formation. With leniency policies offering immunity to th…

The literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings. This conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and t…

This paper explores the effects of deregulation and globalization on the dominant mode of corporate governance in Swedish public firms. The effects are multidimensional—the direction of change in corp…

In this chapter we analyze the role of financial factors in the underlaking of cross-border acquisitions. We discuss financial firm-specific advantages as drivers of these acquisilions as well as the…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the legal possibility for WTO Members to use trade remedies in the form of BTAs/BCAs against other WTO Member, without pronouncing on the policy question concer…

The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple framework combining contractual incompleteness with the existence of an imperfect but contractible performance measure. Contractual incompleteness give…

Using data from the UK Quarterly Labor Force Survey, this paper examines the job finding methods of different ethnic groups in the UK. Our empirical findings suggest that, though personal networks are a…

(i) François Lévêque and Howard Shelanski, (eds.), Antitrust and Regulation in the EU and US: Legal and Economic Perspectives (Cheltenham, UK, and Northamprton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2009), reviewed by La…

We study the relationship between ethnic identity and labour market outcomes of non-EU immigrants in Europe. Using the European Social Survey, we find that there is a penalty to be paid for immigrants…

This paper analyses a wholesale electricity market with supply function competition. Trade in the forward and spot markets is represented by a two-stage game, and its subgame perfect Nash equilibrium…

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the busiest state to state court nowadays. It is a rarity in international relations since it includes compulsory third-party adjudication and a permanent second…

A recurring theme in evaluations of Swedish residential youth care is that treatment is often unplanned. Using a data set of teenagers placed in youth care in 1991 (N = 357), we show that planned trea…

We use data from the Swedish military enlistment to assess the importance of cognitive and noncognitive ability for labor market outcomes. The measure of noncognitive ability is based on a personal in…

This paper attempts to measure the size of South–South foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing East Asia and the trends in it, the characteristics of the investing countries, and the investments…

Do voters tend to underestimate the costs of government spending? Several features of its tax system make Sweden unusually well suited for testing the proposition that voters systematically misperceiv…

This article surveys the literature and adds to the evidence on the impact of employment protection legislation on employment. While stringent employment protection contributes to less turnover and jo…

The Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research (Industriens Utredningsinstitut, IUI) was founded in 1939. In less than ten years, IUI grew from a small survey bureau to a leading research i…

This book brings together the 2009 output of the American Law Institute (ALI) project on World Trade Organization law. Each chapter focuses on a different dispute from the adjudicating bodies of the W…

This paper focuses on the ability of the labor market to correctly match heterogeneous workers to jobs within a given industry and the role that globalization plays in that process. Using matched work…

Political candidates on the right are more beautiful or are seen as more competent than candidates on the left in Australia, Finland, France, and the United States. This appearance gap gives candidate…

The supply function equilibrium provides a game-theoretic model of strategic bidding in oligopolistic wholesale electricity auctions. This paper presents an intuitive account of current understanding…

Despite recent government bailouts of private industry, stimulus packages, and state-led restructuring of companies, economic and academic trends toward privatization continue, with public opinion gen…

This paper investigates the effects of illegal file sharing (piracy) on music and movie sales. The Swedish implementation of the European Union directive IPRED on April 1, 2009 suddenly increased the…

In this introductory chapter to a collective volume, we build on Baumol’s (1990) framework to categorize, catalogue, and classify the budding research field that explores the interplay between institu…

Individuals differ in how they construct their investment portfolios, yet empirical models of portfolio risk typically account only for a small portion of the cross-sectional variance. This paper asks…

Foreign direct investment has been important in the economic growth and global economic integration of developing countries over the last decades. Both Northeast and Southeast Asia, especially the lat…

This paper builds a theory of the shape of the distribution of total-factor productivity (TFP) across countries. The data on productivity suggests vast differences across countries, and arguably even…

Private equity buyouts have become a common element in the industrial development process. I survey the literature on the real economic effect of buyouts: employment, wages, productivity, and long-run…

Science & Technology (S&T) is high on the Chinese policy agenda and the country aims at becoming an innovation-driven economy. Small firms have been important in technology development in othe…

Public policy affects the prevalence and performance of both productive and high-impact entrepreneurship. High-impact entrepreneurship prospers when knowledge is successfully generated and exploited i…

It is often claimed that small and young firms account for a disproportionately large share of net employment growth. We conduct a meta-analysis of the empirical evidence regarding whether net employme…

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, against the background of existing empirical literature on the duration of trade which has found that international trade is often of strikingly short du…

A main component of custom unions is a common trade policy on imports from non-member countries. Trade policy covers both tariff and non-tariff barriers like trade procedures. We argue that since trad…

In this chapter we examine the role of the CFO in setting risk management strategy with respect to macroeconomic risk in particular, and we consider the information requirements for setting a strategy…

We investigate to what extent tolerance, as measured by attitudes toward different types of neighbors, affects economic growth. Data from the World Values Survey enables us to investigate tolerance–gr…

How should the world economy adapt to the increased demand for exhaustible resources from countries like China and India? To address that issue, this paper presents a dynamic model of the world econom…

In this article, we study the relationship between political polarization and public spending using the dispersion of self-reported political preferences as our measure of polarization. Political pola…

This paper reconsiders the predominant typology pioneered by Baumol (J Polit Econ 98(5):893–921, 1990) among productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship. It is shown that the foundation…

Research on entrepreneurship has received an increased amount of interest in recent years, with self-employment being used as the most common proxy for “entrepreneurship” in empirical studies. However…

A strategically minded CFO will realize that strategic corporate risk management is about finding the right balance between risk prevention and proactive value generation. Efficient risk and performan…

Incentive effects of performance-based compensation schemes for management may be weakened or biased by macroeconomic influences on remuneration. These influences can be seen as reflecting luck from t…

The tax laws of most developed countries are debt biased since firms can deduct interest on debt but not on equity. This bias is known to distort investment decisions. However, less is known about how…

In this paper we treat an individual’s health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a…

Swedish elementary school children stopped receiving written end of year report cards following a grading reform in 1982. Gradual implementation of the reform creates an opportunity to investigate the…

The capacity of the transmission network determines the extent of integration of a multinational energy market. Cross-border externalities render coordination of network maintenance and investments ac…

China needs a substantial growth of modern-sector employment to absorb its huge supply of underemployed people and new labor market entrants. The present crisis with its massive layoffs of workers mak…

The increase in foreign direct investments raises concerns about labor market consequences in many countries. It is feared that multinational firms are inclined to shift jobs abroad and increase job vo…

This paper presents a detailed analysis of voters' responses to municipality and regional-level unemployment and economic growth, using panel data on 284 municipalities and 9 regions, covering Swedish…

According to Schumpeter, the creative process of economic development can be divided into the stages of invention, innovation (commercialization) and imitation. Each stage is associated with specific s…

In this paper we present survey evidence suggesting that there exists a sizeable fiscal illusion amongst the general public in Sweden. Respondents in a nation-wide and representative survey systematic…

North Korea is perceived by many as one of the most totalitarian societies of modern time. But in the wake of the economic collapse of the 1990s, North Korean totalitarianism has grappled with new con…

This paper studies the relationship between height and leadership. Using data from a representative sample of Swedish men, I document that tall men are significantly more likely to attain managerial p…

A recurring theme in evaluations of Swedish residential youth care is that treatment is often unplanned. In this paper, I show that planned treatment is strongly positively associated with treatment o…

This paper uses affiliate level data from Swedish multinationals to examine the impact of tax treaties on both overall affiliate sales and the composition of those sales. In line with previous results…

In this paper, I investigate whether instead of strengthening home-based production, government R&D-subsidies can induce R&D-intensive firms to locate production abroad. Investigating firm-lev…

We study the impact of job proximity on individual employment and earnings. The analysis exploits a Swedish refugee dispersal policy to obtain exogenous variation in individual locations. Using very d…