Journal Articles 2000–2009

We develop a duocentric-city model and show that the ratio between the property tax in the suburbs and in the center has an ambiguous impact on the size of the city. We test this model by using a data…

We extend the literature on exclusive dealing by allowing the incumbent and the potential entrant to merge. This uncovers new effects. First, exclusive dealing can be used to improve the incumbent’s b…

Media firms sometimes allow consumers to pay to remove advertisements from an adbased product. We formally examine an ad-based monopolist’s incentives to introduce this option. When deciding whether or…

We develop a theoretical oligopoly model to study how international differences in profit and capital gains taxes affect foreign acquisitions. Reductions in foreign profit taxes tend to trigger ineffi…

Producers submit offer curves to a procurement auction, e.g. an electricity auction, before uncertain demand has been realised. In the supply function equilibrium (SFE), every firm commits to the offe…

Since July 2007, the world economy has experienced a severe financial crisis that originated in the U.S. housing market. Subsequently, the crisis has spread to financial sectors in European and Asian…

We develop a search-matching model in which mobility costs are so high that it is too costly for workers to relocate when a change in their employment status occurs. We show that, in equilibrium, wage…

Displacement is expected to decrease the reservation wage of self-employment by decreasing earnings in paid employment and increasing the probability of unemployment. This paper examines whether displ…

In a recent paper, García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez [García-Mainar, I. & Montuenga-Gómez, V. M. (2005). Education returns of wage earners and self-employed workers: Portugal vs. Spain. Economics…

The issue considered in this study is whether there is misreporting in official data on disability status. While there is a rather large literature on misreporting of self-assessed disability, evidence…

We develop a model that shows that, at the Nash equilibrium, the outcome of each individual embedded in a network is proportional to his/her Katz–Bonacich centrality measure. This measure takes into a…

We examine the effect of firm profits on wages for individual workers while focusing on the empirical complications associated with estimating the extent of rent-sharing. Controlling for worker and fi…

Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in US elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced indivi…

We review the recent empirical research assessing market power on the Nordic wholesale market for electricity, Nord Pool. The studies find no evidence of systematic exploitation of system level market…

The aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search-matching framework. Using these models, we will be able to explain why u…

This paper studies determinants of income inequality using a newly assembled panel of 16 countries over the entire twentieth century. We focus on three groups of income earners: the rich (P99–100), th…

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a literature examining the effects of giving birth to sons on postmenopausal longevity in pre-industrial mothers. The original paper in this lineage used a…

This paper explores the consequences for quality of introducing yardstick competition in duopoly when a verifiable quality indicator is available. Yardstick competition can be implemented by amenu of…

This paper studies whether the degree of women's representation in Swedish local councils affects local public expenditure patterns. To empirically address this question, I first analyze the difference…

We propose a spatial search-matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous. Workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their jobs can be hit by a technological shoc…

On January 29, 2009, professor Scott A. Shane, Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), became the first recipient of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, an upgrade of the previo…

This is a game-theoretic analysis of the link between regime type and international conflict. Democratic leaders can credibly be punished for bad conflict outcomes, whereas autocratic leaders cannot.…

A fundamental problem in all political systems is that the people in power may extract rents to the detriment of the general public. In a democracy, electoral competition and information provided by t…

An exemption in the Swedish Employment Security Act (LAS) in 2001 made it possible for employers with a maximum of ten employees to exempt two workers from the seniority rule at times of redundancies.…

In a game-theoretic framework, we analyse the circumstances under which self-enforcing redistribution and power-sharing coalitions can be used to peacefully resolve ethnic conflict. The existence of a…

We study wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the beginning of industrialization until the present day. Our series are based on new evidence from estate and wealth tax data, foreign and…

Timor-Leste began its independence as one of the poorest nations in the world. Substantial progress has been made thereafter but the challenges for future development are numerous. High population gro…

Analyzing a panel that matches public firms with worker-level data, we find that managerial entrenchment affects workers’ pay. CEOs with more control pay their workers more, but financial incentives t…

Technology firms often decide between being open or closed to third party application development. Building on a two-sided market model with competing platforms, I show that firms might prefer to rest…

Differences between black and white students in Britain are investigated. If black parents would invest in education as much as white parents do, the racial test score gap in mathematics and reading w…

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment in the Chinese manufacturing sector. As one of the world's largest recipients of FDI, China has arguably benefited from…

The EC-Biotech dispute exposed the WTO dispute settlement system to a more challenging test than any previous dispute. Not only did the Panel have to take a stand on the limits of science, or technocr…

This paper discusses allocation of burden of proof in environmental disputes in the WTO system. Besides laying down the natural principles that (i) the complainant carries the burden to (ii) make a pr…

This paper characterizes the Nash equilibrium in a pay-as-bid (discriminatory), divisible-good, procurement auction, Demand by the auctioneer is uncertain as in tbe supply function equilibrium model.…

The International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research was introduced in 1996, and it is now firmly established as the most prestigious award for outstanding research contributions i…

High-growth firms (HGFs) are critical for net job creation and economic growth. We analyze HGFs using the theory of competence blocs, linking firm growth to property rights and the interaction of comp…

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…

We study the political opinions of Swedish social scientists in seven disciplines and find indications of a left‑right divide, with sociology and gender studies being the most left‑leaning disciplines…

Transparency and economic growth have become buzzwords in the economic and political debate in recent years. On the one hand, a lack of transparency is used as an ex post explanation for corporate sca…

Most firms and plants in developing countries produce only for the domestic market and few are able to export. One plausible hypothesis is that foreign networks decrease export costs and that plants w…

We provide facts showing that in service markets: (i) restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI) are under reform, (ii) cross-border Mergers & Acquisitions dominate as the entry mode of FDI,…

In this paper we empirically test the role of firm-specific financial characteristics as drivers of international investment and production. We hypothesize that financial strength generates advantages tha…

This paper is based on a study commissioned by the European Commission, in which we proposed a detailed methodological approach for the ex-post assessment of decisions reached by the European Commissi…

We consider a task, demanding a sequence of efforts, that must be completed by a deadline. Effort is not contractible. Agents face shocks to their opportunity cost of time and are sometimes distracted…

Recent theoretical work has examined the spatial distribution of unemployment using the efficiency wage model as the mechanism by which unemployment arises in the urban economy. This paper extends the…

We consider an economy with two language groups, where only agents who share a language can produce together. Schooling enhances the productivity of students. Individuals attending a unilingual school…

We conduct an extensive robustness analysis of the relationship between trust and growth by investigating a later time period and a bigger sample than in previous studies. In addition to robustness te…

This paper presents a survey of the literature on property rights and economic growth. Different theoretical mechanisms that relate property rights to economic development are discussed. Lack of prote…

In this paper it is argued that the restructuring following the stiffer competition stemming from increased global integration will trigger a race between countries to attract inward foreign direct in…

We present a growth model where agents divide time between rent seeking in the form of resource competition and working in a human capital sector. The latter is interpreted as trade or manufacturing.…

A labor market model is developed in which the formal sector is characterized by search frictions whereas the informal sector is competitive. We show that there exists a unique steady-state equilibriu…

Cambodia has been growing rapidly over the past few years, but remains one of the poorest countries in East Asia. This paper analyzes rural poverty in Cambodia to identify the factors that explain its…

This paper examines if international trade can reduce total welfare in an international oligopoly with differentiated goods. We show that intra-industry trade, i.e. “reciprocal dumping,” can result in…

This paper studies how the surplus generated by the globalization process is divided between MNEs and owners of domestic assets. We construct an oligopoly model where the equilibrium acquisition patte…

This paper analyzes and compares different ways of assessing how people perceived impending threats of war in the past. Conventional Nordic historiography of World War II claims there were few, if any,…

Using the UK Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, we document differences in integration patterns between Muslims and non-Muslims. We find that Muslims integrate less and more slowly than non-…

We analyze the evolution of culture when parents socialize children to the cultural variants that maximize child lifetime utility. Parents invest in cultural transmission by taking into account that c…

I use Swedish establishment-level panel data to test the hypothesis of Bertola and Rogerson (Eur Econ Rev 41:1147–1171 1997) of a positive relation between the degree of wage compression and job reall…

Timor-Leste is among the youngest nations in the world. It began its independence under difficult circumstances: poverty is widespread, education is poor, the industrial sector is non-existent, and pol…

In the era of China’s economic growth and urbanisation, providing adequate and affordable housing for rural–urban migrants in urban areas is crucial for the success of China’s multifaceted reforms. Ye…

This study presents new homogenous series of top income shares in Sweden over the period 1903–2004. We find that, starting from levels of inequality approximately equal to those in other Western count…

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether weak ties play an important role in explaining criminal activities. We first develop a model where individuals learn about crime opportunities by interac…

We present new evidence on the influence of income inequality on generalized trust. Using individual panel data from Swedish counties together with an instrumental variable strategy, we find that diff…

External financing is important when inventors and small technology-based firms commercialize their inventions. However, the private information of inventors about the quality of their products causes…

We examine the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment (FDI). Starting out from the theory of FDI, we show that corruption can have different effects on horizontal investments, which are pri…

Consider a market where producers submit supply functions to a procurement auction with uncertain demand, e.g. an electricity auction. In the Supply Function Equilibrium (SFE), every firm commits to t…

Trading nations exchange tariff concessions in the context of trade liberalizing rounds. Tariffs, nonetheless, are not the only instrument affecting the value of a concession. Domestic instruments aff…

* Also published in The WTO Case Law of 2004–2005. Henrik Horn and Petros C. Mavroidis (eds.). New York: Cambridge.

This paper analyzes economic-social interaction in China in connection with the country's change of economic system. I define an economic system in terms of a multi-dimensional vector of broad institu…

Numerous studies on firm-level data have reported higher average wages in foreign-owned firms than in domestically owned firms. This, however, does not necessarily imply that the individual worker's w…

The spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH) argues that low-skilled minorities residing in US inner cities experience poor labour market outcomes because they are disconnected from suburban job opportunitie…

How do exchange rate changes impact firms’ cash f lows? We extend a simulation method developed in industrial organization to answer this question. We use prices, quantities, and product characteristi…

We show that intermediate goods markets may be efficient, despite the presence of commonly accepted signs of market failure, such as high concentration (both among sellers and buyers), sparse trading…

Using a unique database on Swedish patents owned by small firms and individuals, survival models estimate how different factors influence the decision to commercialize the patents. Such an analysis has…

This article examines the question of trust in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a special focus on the role of ethnicity. We find generalised trust to be low and declining in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moreove…

In recent years, development agencies (DAs) have focused their activities on consulting projects rather than on financing turnkey projects when assisting emerging markets. The main reason is that the…

We develop a model in which nonwhite individuals are defined with respect to their social environment (family, friends, and neighbors) and their attachments to their culture of origin (religion or lan…

Investment liberalizing countries are often concerned that cross-border mergers and acquisitions, in contrast to greenfield investments, might have an adverse effect on domestic firms and consumers. H…

We analyse voter turnout using data from 309 local Norwegian language referendums carried out during 1965e2005, emphasising the effect of referendum type and changes in suffrage. The largest determina…

This paper uses matched employer–employee data set for Sweden to study the relationship between firm age and wages, systematically addressing a variety of possible explanations for observing a firm age–…

We develop a model of vertical pricing in which an original manufacturer sets wholesale prices in two markets that are integrated at the distributor level by parallel imports (PI). The manufacturing fi…

Israel M. Kirzner is the 2006 winner of The International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. In this essay, we present and evaluate his main contributions to the economics of entr…

We discuss the prospects for Chinese money market development and transition to market-based monetary policy operations based on a comparative historical analysis of the present Chinese situation and…

By explicitly considering the spatial dimension of local regional labor markets, we develop a simple dynamic model that explains the spatial correlation between unemployment rates. We then test this m…

This article extends the theory of multinational firms by allowing for agglomeration forces in firmlevel activities such as R&D as well as in production. We develop a two-country general-equilibri…

This paper analyzes the interplay between social structure and information exchange in two competing activities, crime and labor. We consider a dynamic model in which individuals belong to mutually ex…

In recent years, policy debate has increasingly focused on the issues concerning size distribution of firms and employment. It is often claimed that we are approaching a new economic era, where large…

It is easy to identify China’s main economic achievements in connection with the country’s transition to a new economic system: a GDP growth rate perhaps as high as 9 to 10 percent per year since arou…

Background: Helle et al. (2000. Sons reduced maternal longevity in preindustrial humans. Science, 296, 1085) argued that giving birth to sons reduced maternal longevity in pre-industrial societies due…

»Vom Nutzen der Analyse von Finanzmärkten für die Geschichtswissenschaft. Eine Untersuchung anhand des 2. Weltkrieges«. This article presents the analysis of financial markets as a supplementary metho…

In this paper recruitment practices and incentive structures at the state-owned Samhall company, Sweden's main provider of sheltered employment, are discussed. An econometric analysis is performed on…

We develop a model that adopts a log-linear utility function with a variable elasticity of substitution greater than one and show that increasing the property tax reduces city size unambiguously. We t…