Publications

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…

We study competition between political parties in repeated elections with probabilistic voting, allowing a multidimensional policy space and multiple political parties. This model entails multiple equ…

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.…

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…

Consider a quasiconcave, upper semicontinuous and homogeneous of degree $\gamma$ function $f$. This paper shows that the reciprocal of the degree of homogeneity, $1/\gamma$, can be interpreted as a me…

We review the most common methods that have been used to detect discrimination, and their pros and cons. One approach is to compare outcomes of workers from different groups using observational data.…

Field experiments has been conducted in several countries and the results points in the same direction: Ethnic and racial minorities are discriminated against in the hiring decision. We review results…

This paper examines the relationship between environmental accidents and voting. Following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, environmentalist parties entered parliaments in several nations. This paper u…

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…

Motivated by agency theory and arguments from linguistic studies, we argue in this paper the internationalization of a firm’s audit committee to be associated with weaker firm-level corporate governan…

Tanskalaisessa huippututkimuksessa havaittiin, että toimitusjohtajan valitseminen perhepiiristä keskimäärin heikentää yrityksen tuottavuutta.

This paper analyses the relative merits of wealth and capital income taxes as instruments for taxing the rich. The main rationale for a wealth tax is to address the incompleteness of the tax code in t…

We document the time it took for ridesharing to become legalized at the state level across the United States following its local (and often illegal) rollout. States with greater regulatory freedom pas…

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…

Within the field of innovation studies, researchers have identified systematic failures that hamper investment in R&D, innovation, and growth. Accordingly, researchers in this field often seek to…

Some worry that openness undermines important cultural values. We study whether globalization has reduced social trust in Europe and find, using a sample of immigrants to rule out reverse causality, t…

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…

We study the joint design of nonlinear income and education taxes when the government pursues redistributive objectives. A key feature of our setup is that the ability type of an agent can affect both…

This article estimates a dynamic structural model of firm R&D investment in twelve Swedish manufacturing industries and uses it to measure rates of return to R&D and to simulate the impact of…

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…

Motivated by the lack of sub-national empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and institutional development, this study explores the local effects of World Bank aid on perceived institution…

We develop models for weakly separable utility maximization with incomplete adjustment. By allowing for incomplete adjustment, these models account for the decision maker's inability to instantaneousl…

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…

We measure the distributional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic using newly released population register data in Sweden. Monthly earnings inequality increased during the pandemic, and the key driver is…

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…

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…

We study the impact of refugee inflows on voter turnout in Sweden in a period when shifting immigration patterns made the previously homogeneous country increasingly heterogeneous. Analyzing individua…

Professor Saras Sarasvathy is the recipient of the 2022 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Her research contributions have fundamentally changed and invigorated the conversation in the domain…

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 from Sweden’s highly decentralized institutional setup, where municipalities can veto wind p…

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

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 (GWP). This i…

Using comprehensive data on 28 cohorts in Sweden, we analyze CEO health and its determinants and outcomes. We find CEOs are in much better health than the population and on par with other high-skill p…

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…

Previous research indicates that firms pay a premium to poach workers from exporting firms if experience working for an internationally engaged firm reduces trade costs. Since international experience…

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…

A new empirical study examines whether advancements in automation and robotics have affected intergenerational income mobility. The authors find that parents’ exposure to new technologies is associate…

The market for labor is crucial in many respects. Nearly all persons interact with it throughout much of their lives. Moreover, individuals make significant life choices and substantial investments in…

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…

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…

We study the worker-level incidence of technology-related merger synergies by following incumbent target workers around acquisitions, whether or not they remain with the firm. Average acquisition wage…

We study the relationship between adult education and training (AET) and employment in Sweden. Exploiting rich data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, and using…

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…

Based on resource dependence theory we argue for an influence of business groups (BGs) on the board composition of constituent offshore financial multinational enterprises (FMNEs).  Using a unique sam…

Ideological spillovers refer to the modification of an individual’s core beliefs after learning about other people's beliefs.  We study one specific international ideological spillover, namely, t…

Does quality information affect international trade? We show theoretically how firms, in the absence of trustworthy information, may restrict their export activity. Exploring bilateral export flows ac…

We exploit exogenous variation arising from the historical rollout of the Swedish railroad network across municipalities to identify the impacts of improved transport infrastructure on innovative acti…

Populists argue for redistribution from an elite to "ordinary people". The present paper asks if populist administrations actually achieve redistribution. Combining new data on populism in Latin Ameri…

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…

The sixth volume in the Interdisciplinary European Studies assesses the changes that are taking place in the EU’s policies, institutions, and political structures. On the eve of a new chapter of Europ…

In the concluding chapter, the editors take stock of the state of integration seventy years after the EU’s inception. In the early 2020s, the EU faces once again the fateful question of whether integr…

Software is at the core of digitalisation and is often claimed to play a central role in innovation and in shaping competition across industries and firms. There are yet few studies of the extent and…

In this report to the Expert Group on Public Economics (ESO), which was previously published in Swedish (2022:3 Samspel för stabilitet), the balance between fiscal and monetary policy in Sweden is ana…

Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run outcomes. We address this qu…

Against a backcloth of tumultuous events in Europe, the EU faces once again the fateful question of moving towards a federal union or letting flexible integration guide the Union. The sixth volume in…

A set of legal rules in liberal democracies guarantee freedom for individuals to shape their own lives. This study investigates whether such rules suffice to make people satisfied with the freedom the…

Nine out of ten modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, describing who can call a state of emergency (and under which conditions) and the additional powers government enjoys under…

This paper aims to find country-level factors that explain the rise of populist parties in European democracies. While populism is often connected to inequality, we note that right-wing populist parti…

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

Complete financial markets allow countries to share their consumption risks internationally, thereby creating welfare gains through lower volatility of aggregate consumption. Using a panel of 116 coun…

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 examines how automation shapes intergenerational income mobility. Using Swedish  register data on parents and children from 1985 to 2019, we study how parental exposure to robots at th…

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…

This book is the third volume in the research project coordinated by Sveriges Riksbank, Historical Monetary and Financial Statistics for Sweden. The first volume, published in 2010, dealt with exchang…

Bonds play a major role in government and corporate finance and have done so for several centuries. The bond market consists of two parts. In the primary bond market, states, local governments and pri…

This chapter presents the evolution of national wealth in Sweden from 1810 to 2020. The historical period spans agricultural and industrial eras as well as the postwar emergence of a globalized servic…

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…

Previous research suggests that high-trust societies tend to write short constitutions. We document that this pattern is not specific to the entire constitution, but is equally reflected in the emerge…

We use population administrative data from Sweden to study adherence to 63 medication-related guidelines. We compare the adherence of patients without personal access to medical expertise to the adher…

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…

The book is the third in a series of three books on financial history and focuses on the historical development of property prices in Stockholm, in a series that extends back to the Middle Ages. This…

This paper uses Labor Force Survey data for European countries to estimate national investment in data assets, where the asset boundary is extended beyond that for software and databases as currently…

The war in the breadbasket of Europe, which spawned at the heels of the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, sent major cereal prices spiralling upward. The unprecedented sequence of events leading to and inc…

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.…

Spatial variations in rates of new firm formation are large and spatially persistent over long periods of time. A common explanation of this empirical regularity is so-called local entrepreneurship cu…

We estimate impacts of exposure to an infant health intervention trialled in Sweden in the early 1930s using purposively digitised birth registers linked to school catalogues, census files and tax rec…

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…

It is unclear whether democracies or autocracies are more likely to silence or control the media when facing attempt at overthrowing the government. Our estimate of the dynamics of press freedom sugge…

We investigate whether bank loans specifically designed to reduce credit constraints for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have different impacts depending on where the firm is located. Using…

This study aims to explore how to deanonymize cryptocurrency money launderers with the help of machine learning (ML). Money is laundered through cryptocurrencies by distributing funds to multiple acco…

Although there is abundant evidence on individual preferences for policies that reduce national inequality, there is very little evidence on preferences for policies addressing global inequality. To i…

The editors-in-chief of the Annals of Regional Science offer an overview and analysis of recent developments at the journal from January 2020 through December 2021, a time period hampered by the COVID…

The mobility of workers from multinational enterprises (MNEs) to other local firms is increasingly recognized as an important externality mechanism. However, MNEs have strong incentives to curb this m…

A vast economic literature examines the welfare gains and distributional consequences of economic reforms, while much less is generally known on the relationship of inequality and forced regime change…

The choice of language affects how and what we learn. Domestic conditions are easier to describe in one’s native language, and therefore have more room to breathe when discussed in the native language…

Using longitudinal Swedish data, we document robust evidence of highly local spillovers between individuals in similar occupations. The results are consistent with the existence of knowledge spillover…

This paper addresses the competing views by studying Sweden, a country with a dramatic growth in the number of MOCs since the 1970s. We examine the association between the number of MOCs, citizen sati…

Professors and researchers in the Philippines compete within a global arena of science and scholarship. To do so, they use English, even when English is not their native language. Do those who play th…

We show how symmetric equilibria emerge in general two-player contests in which skill and effort are combined to produce output according to a general production technology and players have skills dra…

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…