Journal Articles 2010–2019

This paper considers the identification of social interaction effects in the context of multivariate choices. First, we generalize the theoretical social interaction model to allow individuals to make…

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…

Private equity firms (PE firms) have become common owners of established firms in concentrated markets. We show that the threat of a PE acquisition can trigger incumbent mergers in an otherwise mergersta…

Consider a model where workers from the majority and the minority group choose both their residential location (geographical space) and the intensity of their social interactions (social space). We de…

We propose a new method to analyze employment and productivity dynamics in a consistent way. Using Swedish data we find that net jobs were mainly created in young, small firms and productivity gains w…

This article adopts an evolutionary framework to the study of industrial resilience. We present a study on European regions and assess the extent to which the capacity of their economies to develop ne…

This paper proposes a simple framework to model social preferences in a way that explicitly separates economic incentives from social (context) effects and allows for uncertainty also about the latter.…

The association between occupational status and health has been taken to reveal the presence of occupational health inequalities. However, that interpretation assumes no influence of health status in…

This study examines the governance attributes of post-IPO (initial public offering) retained ownership of private equity in business group constituent firms in contrast to their unaffiliated counterpart…

We study whether independent-school competition involves a trade-off between pupil wellbeing and academic performance. To test this hypothesis, we analyse data covering pupils across the OECD, exploiti…

The VC sector is interesting both in its own right and as a proxy for entrepreneurial finance more broadly. We highlight the tax treatment of stock options as an important factor for variations in the…

The potential for institutional arrangements such as financial incentives and other market mechanisms to undermine intrinsic, moral motivation among both “producers” and “consumers” of tax-financed we…

This paper studies the role of strategic uncertainty in the Nash demand game. A player’s uncertainty about another player’s strategy is modeled as an atomless probability distribution over that player…

We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology, including both binary a…

Current theoretical predictions of how employment protection affects firm productivity are ambiguous. In this paper, I study the effect of employment protection rules on labor productivity using Swedish…

This paper uses population register data on inheritances and wealth in Sweden to estimate the causal impact of inheritances on wealth inequality. We find that inheritances reduce wealth inequality, as…

The energy system in the Nordic countries faces changes driven by increasing integration with the rest of Europe and changes to the generation mix. These developments pose challenges with respect to f…

In recent years, there has been growing concern that multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage in strategic tax planning in order to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions. This common perception is gen…

This paper considers factors determining tax incentives and examines how effective they are using data from OCED and EU countries. It is well known that countries compete when it comes to setting the…

Cross-country comparisons of entrepreneurship are difficult due to the lack of standard empirical definitions of entrepreneurship. Measures focusing on small business activity and selfemployment sugge…

Aim To study (a) the covariation between patient reported experience measures (PREMs) and registered process measures of access and continuity when ranking providers in a primary care setting, and (b)…

Private equity firms (“PE firms”) have become common as owners of established firms in concentrated markets. We discuss the antitrust implications of an active PE market and whether there are any spec…

This paper investigates two hitherto unexplored dimensions inherent in online sequential auctions, namely, how the time elapsed between the end of an auction and the end of the next one and the order…

We show that the firm-size distribution is an important determinant of the relationship between an industry’s employment and output. A theoretical model predicts that changes in demand for an industry…

This study provides an empirical test of price mimicking among publicly owned water utilities. Using a fixed effects spatial Durbin model with data from Swedish municipalities during 2002–2012, I estim…

We show that house prices in general did not respond to a substantial cut in the national property tax in Sweden. The estimates are based on rich register data covering more than 100,000 sales over a…

We study the effect of wealth on labor supply using the randomized assignment of monetary prizes in a large sample of Swedish lottery players. Winning a lottery prize modestly reduces earnings, with t…

The hospitality industry is a rapidly growing revenue generator in many countries and is becoming economically important for generating employment and for integrating of immigrants into the labor mark…

The 2017 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research is given to Hernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima, Peru. Over the last 30 years, Hernando de Soto has…

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the strength of political veto players affects the long-run credibility of economic institutions and how they jointly affect entrepreneurial activ…

Global engagement can impact firm organization and the occupations firms need. We use a simple task-based model of the firm’s choice of occupational inputs to examine how that choice varies with globa…

Using a dataset with over 24 million year-employment observations and the universe of more than 230,000 entries into entrepreneurship in one economy we analyze the gross (including the founders), net…

This paper provides an empirical assessment of an annual wealth tax. Using Swedish administrative data, I estimate net-of-tax-rate elasticities of taxable wealth in the range [0.09, 0.27]. Cross-check…

Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative a…

We analyse the relationship between international sourcing, measured as imports of intermediate inputs, and the technical efficiency of firms in the information and communications technologies (ICT) m…

This paper examines how entrepreneurs and incumbents di¤er in their R&D strategies. We show that entrepreneurs have incentives to choose projects with a higher risk and a higher potential in order…

I examine whether employment protection affects the willingness of working parents to provide childcare. Using a reform that made it easier for employers to dismiss workers in small firms, I find that…

In multi-unit auctions, it is necessary to specify rationing rules to break ties between multiple marginal bids. The standard approach is to ration marginal bids proportionally. This article shows how…

We exploit close elections in Swedish municipalities to test whether relatives of politicians who become mayors obtain economic benefits. We find no benefits for the siblings of new mayors, but the av…

This paper investigates the potential of an infant intervention to improve life expectancy, contributing to emerging interest in the early life origins of chronic disease. We track individuals from bi…

We investigate to what extent ICT and R&D capital is associated with value added growth in the Swedish business sector. By estimating output elasticities based on data for 47 different industries…

We experimentally subliminally prime subjects prior to charity donation decisions by showing words that have connotations of pro-social values for a very brief time (17ms). Our main nding is that, com…

Redistributive policies can provide an insurance against future negative economic shocks. This, in turn, implies that an individual's demand for redistribution is expected to increase with her risk av…

Income inequality in China has been much documented and debated. However, one important aspect of income inequality – social insurance inequality – has been largely understudied. We use a large nation…

In the literature on political economy and public choice, it is typically assumed that government size correlates positively with public corruption. The empirical literature, however, is inconclusive,…

Sweden has a school voucher system with universal coverage and full acceptance of corporate providers. Using a value added approach, we find that students at uppersecondary voucher schools on average…

Business sustainability integration is a complex task and strongly linked to operations management. In fact, sustainability based approaches demand operations management boundaries' expansion, creatio…

Mergers give acquirers control over the assets of the merged entity and give sellers control over financial assets. We propose a cross-border merger model with home biased financially constrained owners…

We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of…

We propose an axiomatic approach to characterize centrality measures for which the centrality of an agent is recursively related to the centralities of the agents she is connected to. This includes th…

Private equity firms are often criticized for laying off workers, but the evidence on who loses their jobs and why is scarce. This paper argues that explanations for job polarization also explain layo…

We analyze a network-formation model where agents belong to different communities. Both individual benefits and costs depend on direct as well as indirect connections. Benefits of an indirect connecti…

This paper analyses the short- and longer-term effects of retirement on mental health in ten European countries. It exploits thresholds created by state pension ages in an individual-fixed effects inst…

This article returns to the discussion of how income inequality affects economic growth. The main argument of the article is that economic freedom is likely to mediate the association between inequali…

There is great variation in views on and treatment of minorities such as gay men across the world. We are the first to pinpoint what features of societies are beneficial to gay men’s quality of life b…

Social trust has been identified as a catalyst for reforms. We take the literature further in two ways. First, we analyze mechanisms through which social trust enables liberalizing reforms—by overcomi…

By the late 1960s, real effective taxation of income from individual firm ownership in Sweden approached 100 percent. A series of tax reforms has reversed this situation. This paper (1) elucidates the…

We use a dynamic model to measure the impact of the entry of large stores on incumbents’ productivity separate from demand while accounting for local markets and the endogeneity of entry. Using data o…

Widespread agreement that a political reform is necessary is no guarantee that it is actually undertaken in a timely manner. There is often a delay before action is taken and reform packages that woul…

We examine how consumers react to the financial distress of durable goods manufacturers by studying the Swedish new car market. We employ a difference-in-differences matching methodology whereby we co…

Individual willingness to enter competitive environments predicts career choices and labor market outcomes. Meanwhile, many people experience competitive contexts as stressful. We use two laboratory e…

What does the future hold for the welfare state? An assessment of its ongoing viability in the years to come, and challenge to the idea that it would – or should – be replaced in the foreseeable futur…

Policy advice by the OECD has long been at the heart of academic debates on welfare state reform, with frequent claims questioning the ideological orientation of recommendations. This paper constructs…

A specific monetary tax − called periodic re-coinage − was applied for almost 200 years in large parts of medieval Europe. Old coins were frequently declared invalid and exchanged for new ones based o…

An increasingly large share of cross-border acquisitions are undertaken by private equity-firms (PEfirms) and not by traditional multinational enterprises (MNEs). We propose a model of cross-border acqu…

We use a tailor-made survey on a Swedish sample to investigate how individuals’ relative income affects their demand for redistribution. We first document that a majority misperceive their position in…

Wind power generation of electricity has gained popular support because of its low environmental impact and its low costs relative to other renewable energy sources. However, concerns have been raised…

In most OECD-countries immigrants have lower employment and higher unemployment than natives. The gap in labor market outcomes is larger in countries with more immigrant friendly attitudes. This paper…

We report on two experiments investigating whether there is a gender difference in the willingness to compete against oneself (self-competition), similar to what is found when competing against others…

The surplus that is created in a successful entrepreneurial venture is much higher than the profit corresponding to the risk-adjusted market rate of return. The part of the surplus that exceeds this l…

Here, we respond to the comments raised by Nekby and Pettersson-Lidbom on our paper Dahlberg et al. (2012, Journal of Political Economy 120, 41–76). We argue that our estimates are internally valid, b…

Failure to express minority views may distort the behavior of company boards, committees, juries, and other decision-making bodies. Devising a new experimental procedure to measure such conformity in…

This article shows that a simple monetary incentive can dramatically reduce electric energy consumption (EEC) in the residential sector and simultaneously achieve a more desirable allocation of EEC co…

Understanding more about the geographic location of leisure services is an important quest for research. For a long time now in developed economies, almost all employment growth is occurring within th…

We analyze the effect of ICT and R&D on total factor productivity (TFP) growth across different industries in Sweden. R&D alone is significantly associated with contemporaneous TFP growth, thu…

This study uses new data on Swedish national wealth over the last two hundred years to examine whether the patterns in wealth-income ratios found by Piketty and Zucman (2014) extend to small and less…

We survey the literature on the economic consequences of the structure of social networks. We develop a taxonomy of "macro" and "micro" characteristics of social-interaction networks and discuss both…

In this empirical study, we investigate the variation in firms’ response to institutional pressure for gender-balanced boards, focusing specifically on the preservation of prevailing practices of dire…

We investigate whether, how, and why individual education attainment depends on the educational attainment of schoolmates. Specifically, using longitudinal data on students and their friends in a natio…

We propose a dynastic model where individuals are born into an educated or uneducated environment that they inherit from their parents. We study the impact of social interactions on the correlation in…

Since good-looking politicians win more votes, a beauty advantage for politicians on the left or on the right is bound to have political consequences. We show that politicians on the right look more b…

This paper explores the role of retailers as an urban amenity. Using data for Swedish rural and city municipalities for 2002–08, ‘accessibility-to-shops’ measures are constructed for the shops in the…

Over the recent decades there has been a dramatic rise in top income shares in most Western countries. Several explanations have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, some pointing at the role of…

We investigate the eects of organizational culture and personal values on performance under individual and team contest incentives. We develop a model of regard for others and in-group favoritism that…

We develop a model where, in the first stage, minority individuals have to decide whether or not they want to assimilate to the majority culture while, in the second stage, all individuals (both from t…

The purpose of this paper is to explore turnaround performance as a resultant from both Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) processes and collaborative measures. This paper presents how CDM operates i…

Objective: We explore whether standardisation in health care based on evidence on group level and a public health perspective is in conflict with responsiveness towards individual patient’s expectatio…

We study the intergenerational transmission of cognitive and noncognitive abilities using population data and correct for measurement error in abilities using two sets of instruments. The results show…

The purpose of this paper is to nuance the widely held view that well-functioning institutions are the ultimate prerequisite for innovation and entrepreneurship. This is done by putting the spotlight…

The interplay between entrepreneurship and institutions is crucial for economic development; however, the view that institutions determine the extent to which entrepreneurial activity is productive is…

In this article, we provide some descriptive statistics of the first twenty years of the WTO (World Trade Organization) dispute settlement., that we have extracted from the data set that we have put t…

Tolerance is a distinguishing feature of Western culture. Still, it varies between and within countries, as well as over time, and irrespective of whether one values it for its own sake or for its ben…

In this paper, I explore the politically contested association between the degree of capitalism, captured by measures of economic freedom, and the risk and characteristics of economic crises. After of…

This paper attempts to understand foreign direct investment (FDI) heterogeneity and offers useful insights about aggregation issues in FDI estimations by carrying out a spatial econometric analysis us…

Scholars in the fields of archaeology and numismatics have long been familiar with the phenomenon of periodic recoinage (renovatio monetae), which dominated monetary taxation in medieval Europe for al…

We propose a theoretical framework to study the determinants of ethnic and religious identity along two distinct motivational processes: cultural distinction and cultural conformity. Under cultural co…

This article studies the evolution of Swedish inheritance taxation since the late nineteenth century to its abolition in 2004. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, the annual effective…

Workers from a source country consider whether or not to illegally migrate to a host country. This decision depends crucially on the proportion of workers who migrate and on whether or not the host co…

We analyze the intergenerational transmission of the strength of religion focusing on the interplay between family and social influences. We find that parental investment in transmitting religious val…