Journal Articles 2010–2019

We demonstrate how commodity producers can take strategic speculative positions in derivatives markets to soften competition in the spot market. In our game, producers first choose a portfolio of call…

World Trade Organization (WTO) judges are proposed by the WTO Secretariat and elected to act as ‘judges’ if either approved by the parties to a dispute, or, by the WTO Director-General in case no agre…

I establish a positive relationship between family ties and civic virtues, as captured by disapproval of tax and benefit cheating, corruption and a range of other dimensions of exploiting others for p…

Analysing a reform in the Swedish public sickness insurance, we find that an increased replacement rate for one spouse has a negative cross effect on the other spouse's labour supply. The cross effects…

Corporate boards often change their working language when they acquire foreign members. Consequently, boards “talk” in one language but “think” in another. The present study explores and explains how…

We develop a model where the unemployed workers in the city can find a job either directly or through weak or strong ties. We show that, in denser areas, individuals choose to interact with more peopl…

Retail is concentrated in areas where demand is high. A measure of market potential can be used to calculate place-specific demand for retail services. The effect of distance on market potential depen…

This paper presents evidence that generalized trust promotes health. Children of immigrants in a broad set of European countries with ancestry from across the world are studied. Individuals are examin…

Tolerant societies seem to function better than nontolerant societies both economically and socially. This makes it worthwhile to identify ways to stimulate tolerance. While previous research indicate…

This article explores whether trade facilitation – i.e. improved and simplified trade procedures – could be an important part of the reform agenda of the Barcelona Process. Adopting a Southern perspec…

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

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…

This paper examines the development of taxation in Sweden from 1862 to 2010. The examination includes six key aspects of the Swedish tax system, namely the taxation of labor income, capital income, we…

We consider a model where the criminal decision of each individual is affected by not only her own characteristics, but also by the characteristics of her friends (contextual effects). We determine wh…

We study the effect of taxation on entrepreneurship, investigating how taxes affect both the number of start-ups and their average quality. We show theoretically that even with risk neutral agents and…

Using data from 114 countries (1983–2007), we examine the relationship between globalization and World Bank absolute poverty estimates. We find a significant negative correlation between globalization a…

This study analyses whether the Swedish school choice reform, enacted in 1992, had differential effects for students from different socio-economic backgrounds. We use detailed geographical data on stu…

In proportional representation (PR) systems, political power is typically shared across several political parties. Many parties are small and focused on specific policies, such as environmental policy…

This essay uses Edmund Phelps’ new book Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Phelps 2013) as inspiration to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship. The boo…

This paper estimates the intergenerational transmission of trust by studying children of immigrants in 29 European countries with ancestry in 87 nations. There is significant transmission of trust on…

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…

I generalize the workhorse model of network competition to include income effects in demand. Empirical work has shown income effects to be positive and statistically significant. Income effects delive…

The cross-country correlation between social trust and income equality is well documented, but few studies examine the direction of causality. We show theoretically that by facilitating cooperation, t…

We develop a dynamic network formation model that can explain the observed nestedness in real-world networks. Links are formed on the basis of agents' centrality and have an exponentially distributed…

What explains the world-wide trend of pro-entrepreneurial policies? We study entrepreneurial policy in the form of entry costs in a lobbying model taking into account the conflict of interest between e…

This paper develops an improved test of economic convergence or divergence using time series methods by introducing nonlinear trends in the form of logarithmic trend functions into the vector error co…

Using data on institutional quality and the KOF Globalization Index, we examine over 100 countries from 1992 to 2010 to analyse the relationship between economic and social globalization and six measu…

We show theoretically that the poor can benefit from price changes induced by higher income inequality. As the number of poor increases, the market for products aimed toward the poor grows, and such p…

We study the impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on short- and medium-term economic performancein Sweden. The pandemic was one of the severest and deadliest pandemics in human history, but it hashit…

We develop a unified model embedding different behavioral mechanisms of social interac-tions and design a statistical model selection test to differentiate between them in empiricalapplications. This…

Real-world financial contracts vary greatly in the combinations of cash flow contingency terms and control rights used. Extant theoretical work explains such variation by arguing that each investor fi…

Central banks have become more independent in many countries. A common rationale has been the existence of a credibility (or lack-of-trust) problem for monetary policy. This indicates a possible and u…

We use the Economic Freedom Index to characterize the institutions of the Athenian city-state in the fourth century BCE. It has been shown that ancient Greece witnessed improved living conditions for…

Revealed preference tests are frequently used to check data on the behavior of agents for consistency with economic theory. Unfortunately these tests lack a stochastic element and thus one violation o…

Globalization, high growth rates in high-tech industries, growing emerging markets and harmonization of patent institutions across countries have stimulated patenting in foreign markets. We use a simp…

We introduce a criterion for robustness to strategic uncertainty in games with continuum strategy sets. We model a player’s uncertainty about another player’s strategy as an atomless probability distr…

Stimulating entrepreneurship is high on the policy agenda of many countries. We study the effects of tax policies on entrepreneurs' choice of riskiness (or quality) of an innovation project, and on th…

Abstract We study the evolution of modern Swedish wealth taxation from its introduction in**1911 until it was abolished in 2007. The rules concerning valuation of assets, deductions/exemptions and tax…

During the last decades, we have witnessed a large number of entrepreneurial firms that reach the world market at a fast pace (‘born global firms’). Our analysis suggests that the ongoing globalisatio…

One of the most cited studies within the field of binary choice models is that of Klein and Spady (1993), in which the authors propose a semiparametric estimator for use when the distribution of the er…

When commenting on the European radical right, the term ‘single-issue party’ is frequently bandied about. We survey the various conceptualizations of the term and then apply them to the Sweden Democra…

This paper uses panel data on bilateral FDI stocks in the European Union to empirically analyze the impact of labor and corporate taxations on FDI decisions. While the effect of corporate taxes on FDI…

The most common reason for scrapping a wind turbine in Denmark is to make room for a newer turbine. The decision to scrap a wind turbine is then highly dependent on an opportunity cost that comes from…

We examine how interaction choices depend on the interplay of social and physical distance, and show that agents who are more central in the social network, or are located closer to the geographic cen…

This study contributes to the debate concerning the appropriate role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in WTO dispute settlement. It seeks to address this relationship in light of the re…

Does rainfall during the Election Day reduce voter turnout? Previous research shows that in the US one inch of rain reduces turnout with about one percentage point. We turn to the Swedish context in o…

Entrepreneurship policy mainly aims to promote innovative Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. However, the rate of entrepreneurship is commonly proxied using quantity-based metrics, such as small business…

This article analyzes a rich Swedish data set with information on the electoral turnout of a large sample of adoptees, their siblings, their adoptive parents, and their biological parents. We use a si…

Political campaigns employ complex strategies to persuade voters to support them. We analyse the contributions of elements of these strategies using data from a field experiment that randomly assigned…

We revisit the question how inward FDI and multinational ownership affect relative labor demand. Motivated by the recent literature that distinguish between skills and tasks, we argue that the impact…

This paper uses data from Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires, supplemented with other publicly available information, to study the migratory behavior of the very rich. Billionaires are more likely…

The Nordic countries are known for their well-functioning public administrations. In indices measuring control of corruption and the quality of the rule of law, they frequently occupy top positions. H…

This article examines power issues for the ADF and four break models (Perron, 1989; Zivot and Andrews, 1992) when the DGP corresponds to one of the break models. Choosing to test an incorrect break mo…

While baseline testosterone has recently been implicated in risk-taking in men, less is known about the effects of changing levels of testosterone on financial risk. Here we attempt to influence testost…

The aim of this article is to explore the structure of cities as a function of labor differentiation, gains to trade, a fixed cost for constructing the transportation network, a variable cost of commo…

This article investigates whether public funds should support R&D and if so, how such support should be designed in order to be efficient and to comply with the legal requirements stated in EU law…

This paper finds evidence that more democratic political institutions increase trust. Second generation immigrants with ancestries from 115 countries are studied within 30 European countries. Comparin…

Twins-based estimates of the return to schooling have featured prominently in the economics of education literature. Their unbiasedness hinges critically on the assumption that within-pair variation i…

In response to high and enduring youth unemployment, large payroll tax cuts for young workers were implemented in two Swedish reforms in 2007 and 2009. This paper analyses the effects of the reforms o…

Economic growth necessitates extensive churning and restructuring, the bulk of which is about shifts from less to more successful firms within the same industry. Labor market institutions favoring rea…

This paper provides micro-level evidence on the relationship between labor market conditions and social insurance participation among Chinese industrial firms. I find that the increased scarcity of la…

Research on entrepreneurship has flourished in recent years and is evolving rapidly. This article explores the history of entrepreneurship research, how the research domain has evolved, and its curren…

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 assumed that the individual is either able or unable…

This study examines globalization of monitoring practices by focusing on how American (U.S.) influences on European firms impact the dismissal risk for these firms’ CEOs. Specifically, we argue that t…

I study the internal organization of firms using Swedish occupation data. The empirical patterns match the theoretical predictions of Caliendo and Rossi-Hansberg (2012) and are similar to the patterns…

According to the ‘law of dispersion’, the level of inequality in political participation is higher when voter turnout is low. We empirically test this hypothesis by evaluating levels of voter turnout…

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is currently promoting indigenous technology development through support of Chinese firms and, arguably, by restricting operations of foreign multinational firms.…

We model patent-signaling by informed venture capitalists to incumbent acquirers of developed innovations. We show that, to signal, venture capitalists develop more patents with higher impact than inc…

This paper experimentally investigates free-riding behavior on communication cost in a coordination game and finds strong indications of such free-riding. Firstly, the subjects wait for others to send…

Theoretically, there are several reasons to expect education to have a positive effect on health. Empirical research suggests that education can be an important health determinant. However, it has not…

The literature on trade facilitation has mostly focused on implications for trade volumes. However, recent theoretical contributions have emphasized that trade costs – such as transaction costs relate…

The performance of new firms is important for economic development but research has produced limited knowledge about the key relationships among growth, profitability, and survival for new firms. Based o…

Many developing countries would like to increase employment in the formal sectors. One way to accomplish this goal may be to encourage the entrance of foreign firms. We examine employment growth in In…

Most government bureaucracies in developed countries use civil service systems. What accounts for their adoption? We develop and test a model of bureaucratic reforms under repeated partisan competitio…

Green certificates are the main instrument for promoting renewable electricity (RES-E) in Sweden. But certificates cover only a limited share of total RES-E production. Under partial coverage, crowding…

In most electricity markets generators must submit step-function offers to a uniform price auction. These markets are often modelled as simpler pure-strategy Supply Function Equilibria (SFE) with cont…

Despite the central role played by human capital in entrepreneurship, little is known about how employees in entrepreneurial firms are compensated and incentivized. We address this gap in the literatu…

Social and cultural determinants of economic institutions and outcomes have come to the forefront of economic research. We introduce religiosity, measured as the share for which religion is important…

Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain g…

This article provides an empirical analysis of the impact of tax differentials and agglomeration economies on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The article departs from most previous work on FDI and ta…

This paper models the interaction between individuals’ identity choices and redistribution. Both redistributive policies and identity choices are endogenous, and there might be multiple equilibria. Th…

Large segments of the rural Timorese population survive on subsistence farming characterized by simple production methods and low output. Broad-based improvements in Timorese living standards require…

Tolerance has the potential to affect both economic growth and wellbeing. It is therefore important to discern its determinants. We contribute to the literature by investigating whether the degree to…

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration…

I apply a survival model to a detailed data set of Swedish patents to estimate how different financing factors affect the likelihood of patent renewal. Since the owners know more about the patents tha…

The aim of this paper is to provide a new mechanism based on social interactions, explaining why distance to jobs can have a negative impact on workers’ labor-market outcomes, especially ethnic minori…

We introduce the concept of an offer distribution function to analyze randomized offer curves in multiunit procurement auctions. We characterize mixed-strategy Nash equilibria for pay-as-bid auctions…

This paper considers two multi-item auction formats (ascending and sealed bid) which both identify the minimum Walrasian equilibrium prices and where truthful preference revelation constitutes an equi…

We consider a model of international migration where skills of workers are imperfectly observed by firms in the host country and where information asymmetries are more severe for immigrants than for na…

This paper investigates the effects of political representation on electoral outcomes at the party and coalition levels in proportional election systems using data from Swedish local government electi…

In single-equation tests, real exchange rates show mean reversion for nine of 10 Central and Eastern European transition countries for the period January 1993 to December 2005. Because of the shift fr…

Existing studies of entrepreneurship focus on entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is typically trivial: self-employed persons. This article investigates entrepreneurs whose…

The purpose of the research endeavor published in this Special Section is to further our understanding of the extent, character, and orientation of entrepreneurial activity in today’s wealthy countrie…

This article makes use of individual data from 2004 to 2008 on owners of closely held businesses in Sweden to estimate the role of both tax and non-tax determinants in the choice to be a closely held…

This article analyzes how institutional differences affect university entrepreneurship. We focus on ownership of faculty inventions, and compare two institutional regimes, the United States and Sweden…

This article examines the interaction between intellectual property protection and competition policy on the choice of entrepreneurs with respect to commercialization as well as the rate of innovation…

We survey the literature on venture capital and institutions and present a case study comparing the development of the venture capital market in the United States and Sweden. Our literature survey und…

It is well established within both the economics and power system engineering literature that hydropower can act as a complement to large amounts of intermittent energy. In particular hydropower can a…