Publications

In the first chapter, the authors review the evolution of borders throughout European history. The modern concept of borders as dividing lines is a fairly recent phenomenon and constitutes somewhat of…

As the European Union (EU) grapples with increased external and internal trade barriers, it stands at a crossroads. This paper examines the EU's changing perspective on globalization, reflecting a shi…

In the last chapter, the authors take stock of the challenges which are besetting the European Union’s (EU) internal and external borders from the perspective of contemporary events and crises, and ev…

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the generational wealth transfer within Sweden’s public pay-as-you-go pension system introduced in 1960. Using extensive administrative registers, the p…

This study outlines how the corporate governance of emerging market firms is influenced by corporate affiliation and institutional embeddedness. We argue that the stronger the business group affiliati…

This book examines the implications for the EU of a radically changed international context characterized by systemic rivalry, competition over norms and regulations, and growing strategic tension. Gl…

Our use of longitudinal register data combined with a unique survey allows us to offer a more comprehensive picture of rural self-employment than in previous studies. We find that self-employed in rur…

This thesis comprises four self-contained papers that rely on applied micro-econometric methods to understand which factors are important in shaping the gender wage gap in globalized firms and how fir…

This chapter surveys the literature on the association between economic freedom and de facto respect of human rights. Noting that a plethora of theoretical channels might connect the two, empirical ev…

The increase in support for populist politicians has led to an intensive search for explanations. A free market economy that creates winners and losers due to rapid economic transformation has been su…

This chapter is the introduction to the Handbook of Research on Economic Freedom, an overview of research on the causes and consequences of the market economy. The chapter places current research in a…

We study the causal effects of previous experience and language skills when newly arrived refugees in Sweden apply for job openings by means of a field experiment. Applications were sent from randomly…

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current research on economic freedom, including studies on how more market-oriented policies affect growth, entrepreneurship, and equality

Academic freedom is a cornerstone of modern academic life. It is not only implied by basic liberal principles but also contributes to scientific progress and economic growth. It is therefore important…

This comprehensive report delves into the economic policy responses of the Nordic countries amidst the tumultuous period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the subsequent recovery phase, the energy cris…

Politicians and international organisations advocate for increased regulation and government control of industry in order to handle climate change and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. However,…

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…

Not only do corporations discriminate, but states do as well. We relate measures of government discrimination against various groups to measures of institutions and culture. We find that states behave…

We evaluate a non-targeted summer youth employment program (SYEP) for high school students aged 16–19 in Stockholm, Sweden, where public sector job offers were as good as randomly assigned. In contras…

Using the random assignment of university engineering students to peer groups during introductory freshmen weeks, this paper studies how a student's parental income and facial attractiveness affect th…

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…

This open access book raises some central questions: Do we need moonshot policies to spur innovation and economic growth? What are the risks associated with such policies?

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…

Governments can provide targeted R&D subsidies and/or tax incentives to spur innovation and growth in the business sector. This chapter analyzes the theoretical pros and cons of these policy instr…

This chapter integrates findings from several different case studies on mission-oriented innovation policies (MOIPs) and makes use of the existing literature to briefly describe three other missions:…

The notion that society should be organized around large so-called missions has gained momentum in public debate, and the reemergence of active industrial policy across the world has been inspired by…

This paper investigates the association between relative mobile broadband penetration (i.e. mobile broadband connections in total mobile connections) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally. The s…

Productivity in Sweden, measured as GDP per hour worked, has in recent decades been among the highest in the world. The fact that Swedish wealth measured as GDP per capita is still not among the highe…

The notion that society should be organized around large so-called missions has gained momentum in public debate, and the reemergence of active industrial policy across the world has been inspired by…

Based on a review of 700+ peer-reviewed articles since 1990, identified using text mining methodology and supervised machine learning, we analyze how neo-Schumpeterian growth theorists relate to the e…

Why has collaboration become increasingly central to technological progress? We document the role of lowered travel costs by combining patent data with the rollout of the Swedish railroad network in t…

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…

No matter whether one belives climate change is a major threat to humanity or a minor bump on the road to global prosperity, most Western governments have set clear goals for how much they aim to redu…

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…

The net-zero agreement on carbon emission from Paris 2015 gives a key role to fossil-free energy technologies with an expected multifold growth rate over the coming decades, when successively replacin…

The New Keynesian model, augmented with the working capital channel, predicts that a rise in the policy rate causes firms that use more working capital to increase their prices more, and that the pass…

The High and Late Middle Ages in Sweden were revolutionary periods characterized by an economy that went from local self-sufficiency in the countryside to increased division of labour and emerging cit…

The High and Late Middle Ages in Sweden were revolutionary periods characterized by an economy that went from local self-sufficiency in the countryside to increased division of labour and emerging cit…

We identify dementia risk factors using demographic data for Swedish cohorts 1932–1950. Factors are advanced maternal age, sibling spacing, and twin births. These factors increase dementia risk, espec…

We study commercialization of personal data through personalized advertising by a content platform. Content consumption generates productive data about consumer preferences. The firm invests in artifi…

This study evaluated discrimination against children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) in Swedish sports clubs through a field experiment. Two fictitious fathers sent emails to 193 top-division clu…

A common claim holds that investment treaties reduce the willingness of host countries to regulate foreign-owned, environmentally-stranded, investments. A counter-argument is that the treaties can yie…

Europe faces significant challenges in the coming decades: geopolitical, demographic, technological, increased competition, climate-related, and health issues due to an aging population, to mention a…

We use population-wide tax register data to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on firm sales, tax revenues, and sick pay in Sweden. The pandemic impact is identified using within-year, betwe…

This paper integrates findings from several different case studies on Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies (MOIPs) and makes use of existing literature to briefly describe three other missions: The Wa…

Many electricity markets use capacity mechanisms to support generation owners. Capacity payments can mitigate imperfections associated with “missing money” in the spot market and solve transitory capa…

Many countries’ insolvency systems focus on restructuring financial liabilities, and ignore operational liabilities such as leases and long-term supplier contracts. We model insolvency procedures with…

We investigate the impact of attending a free school in England – that is, a new start-up school that enjoys considerable autonomy while remaining in the state sector. We analyse the effects of two se…

Beliefs about whether luck or effort determines individuals’ economic outcomes in life (luck vs effort beliefs) are central for individuals’ opinions on inequality and political preferences. Those who…

Over the past 30 years, the use of municipally owned corporations (MOCs) has increased rapidly in Sweden. Proponents of MOCs claim that they promote efficiency. However, at the same time, critics stre…

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.…

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…

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…

Despite the comprehensive previous research on different aspects of inventions and externalities spanning both the micro and macro levels, no prior studies have, to our knowledge, examined the relatio…

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…

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…

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…

All organizations need to allocate labor to production and administration. In many cases – particularly within the public sector – the optimal allocation is far from obvious. Indeed, vocal concerns ha…

Local resistance towards wind power is a central challenge for the energy transition, implying that legally imposed compensation schemes for nearby residents may become more prevalent in the near futu…

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, examining data from the highly decentralized institutional setup in Sweden where approval o…

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 how sourcing of applied and basic knowledge is related to the likelihood and speed at which inventions become innovations as well as their profitability. By using a patent database with uniqu…

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…