Assar Lindbeck, Mårten Palme and Mats Persson
Does the average level of sickness absence in a neighborhood affect individual sickness absence through social interaction on the neighborhood level? To answer this question, we consider evidence of local benefit-dependency cultures. Well-known…
Assar Lindbeck
The publication of János Kornai’s memoirs, By Force of Thought, provides an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves of Kornai’s great contributions to economic research. This paper discusses both his basic research strategy and some of his main research…
Sune Karlsson, Nannan Lundin, Fredrik Sjöholm and Ping He
This paper examines the effect of FDI on job creation in the Chinese manufacturing sector. As one of the world’s largest recipients of FDI, China has arguably benefited from foreign multinational enterprises in various respects. However, one of the main…
Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldenström
We study the development of wealth concentration in Sweden over 130 years, from the beginning of industrialization until present day. Our series are based on a wide array of new evidence from estate- and wealth tax data, estimates of foreign and domestic…
Jesper Roine, Jonas Vlachos and Daniel Waldenström
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), the upper middle class (P90-99), and the rest of the…
Assar Lindbeck
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 multidimensional vector of broad institutional characteristics, and I emphasize that important…
Mattias Ganslandt, Lars Persson and Helder Vasconcelos
In their merger control, EU and the US have considered symmetric size distribution (cost structure) of firms to be a factor potentially leading to collusion. We show that forbidding mergers leading to symmetric market structures can induce mergers leading…
Chiara Fumagalli, Massimo Motta, Lars Persson
We extend the literature on exclusive dealing, which assumes that entry can occur only by installing new capacity, by allowing the incumbent and the potential entrant to merge. This uncovers new effects. First, exclusive deals can be used to improve the…
Martin Olsson
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. Using this within-country enforcement variation, the…
Robin Douhan and Magnus Henrekson
We outline a politico-economic growth system centered around the entrepreneur. By defining entrepreneurs in relation to economic rents we are able to develop a more general theory comprising central aspects of research within the fields of…
Henrik Jordahl
This paper reviews the literature on economic inequality and trust. Cross-country studies, within-country studies, and experiments all suggest that economic inequality exerts a negative influence on trust. Four mechanisms are proposed to explain the…
Harald Edquist
This paper investigates labor productivity growth and the contribution to labor productivity growth in Swedish manufacturing during electrification and the ICT revolution. The paper distinguishes between technology-producing, intensive and less intensive…
Alessandro Bonatti and Kaj Thomsson
The goal of this paper is twofold: First, to develop an estimable model of legislative politics in the US Congress, second, to provide a greater understanding of the objectives behind the New Deal. In the theoretical model, the distribution of…
Magnus Henrekson and Daniel Waldenström
Billions of dollars are allocated every year to university research. Increased specialisation and international integration of research and researchers has sharply raised the need for comparisons of performance across fields, institutions and individual…
Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl and Charlotta Stern
We study the political opinions of Swedish social scientists in seven disciplines. A survey was sent to 4,301 academics at 25 colleges and universities, which makes the coverage of the disciplines included more or less comprehensive. When it comes to…
Nannan Lundin and Sylvia Schwaag Serger
As one of the world’s largest recipients of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), China is emerging as a key global player in Research and Development (R&D). This rapid increase in R&D investment is mainly attributed to the effort of strengthening the…
Katariina Hakkala, Fredrik Heyman and Fredrik Sjöholm
The growing number of cross-border acquisitions has in many countries raised concerns about labor demand consequences. In this study, we use detailed firm level data to examine how increased internationalization and multinational activity affect the…
Nannan Lundin, Fredrik Sjöholm, Ping He and Jinchang Qian
FDI can be an important channel for developing countries’ ability to get access to new technology. The impact of FDI on domestically-owned firms’ technology development is less examined but it is frequently argued that technology externalities or…
Magnus Henrekson
In this paper entrepreneurs are defined as agents who bring about economic change by combining their own effort with other factors of production in search of economic rents. The institutional setup is argued to determine both the supply and direction of…
Anders Engvall, Örjan Sjöberg and Fredrik Sjöholm
Cambodia has been growing rapidly over the past few years but still remains one of the poorest countries in East Asia. In particular, poverty is widespread in rural Cambodia. This paper examines rural poverty in Cambodia with a view to furthering our…
Niclas Berggren, Mikael Elinder and Henrik Jordahl
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 tests that focus on model uncertainty, we systematize the…
Mattias Ganslandt and Keith E. Maskus
The existence of parallel imports (PI) raises a number of interesting policy and strategic questions, which are the subject of this survey article. For example, parallel trade is essentially arbitrage within policy-integrated markets of IPR-protected…
Karl-Markus Modén, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
We examine the effects of foreign entry on productive efficiency during the Polish investment liberalization. The performance of foreign acquisitions is compared to foreign firms entering the market through greenfield entry, as well as domestic…
Mattias Ganslandt and Keith E. Maskus
We develop a model of vertical pricing in which an original manufacturer sets wholesale prices in two markets integrated at the distributor level by parallel imports (PI). In this context we show that if competition policy requires uniform wholesale…
Helena Svaleryd
This paper studies whether the degree of women’s representation in Swedish local councils affects local public expenditure patterns. Theoretically, the individual preferences of elected representatives may have an impact on public expenditure if full…
Per Skedinger
Minimum wages in Sweden are collectively agreed and differ by industry. Within agreements, the rates are also highly differentiated. Minimum wages are higher in Sweden than in any of the countries with statutory rates considered in this study. This is…
Henry Ohlsson, Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldenström
The objective of this paper is to study the dynamics of the wealth distribution over the path of economic development. More specifically, we are interested in distinguishing between changes which seem to be country specific and characteristics shared by…
Helena Svaleryd and Jonas Vlachos
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 the media may keep such rent extraction at bay. We…
Nannan Lundin; Fredrik Sjöholm; He Ping; Jinchang Qian
This paper examines how Science and Technology (S&T) contribute to job creation in the Chinese manufacturing sector. The ambition of transforming China into an innovation-oriented nation and the emphasis on indigenous innovation capacity building have…
Jens Forssbæck and Lars Oxelheim
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 the development in 11 European countries from 1979 up…
Nannan Lundin, Fredrik Sjöholm, He Ping and Jinchang Qian
Science & Technology (S&T) is high on the Chinese policy agenda but there are large uncertainties on the actual S&T development. For instance, previous studies tend to focus only on large and medium-sized enterprises (LMEs). The situation in…
Sven-Olof Fridolfsson
In a framework where mergers are mutually excluding, I show that firms pursue anti- rather than (alternative) pro-competitive mergers. Potential outsiders to anti-competitive mergers refrain from pursuing pro-competitive mergers if the positive…
Olivier Bertrand, Katariina Hakkala and Pehr-Johan Norbäck
This paper investigates how the entry mode of foreign direct investment (FDI) affects the affiliate R&D activities using unique data on Swedish multinational firms over a long period of time (1970 to 1998). On average, acquired affiliates are more…
Jonas Björnerstedt and Johan Stennek
This note provides sufficient conditions for immediate agreement in an extensive form model of interdependent bilateral bargaining. The model is suggested by Björnerstedt and Stennek (2006) as a work horse for studying bilateral oligopoly. The key feature…
Johan Stennek
Sports organizations, Hollywood studios and TV channels grant satellite and cable networks exclusive rights to televise their matches, movies and media contents. Exclusive distribution prevents viewers from watching attractive programs, and reduces the…
Pontus Braunerhjelm and Roger Svensson
According to Schumpeter, the creative process of economic development can be divided into three distinguishable stages of invention, innovation (commercialization) and imitation. We show why there is a rationale for the Schumpeterian entrepreneur to also…
Henrik Horn, Giovanni Maggi and Robert W. Staiger
We propose a model of trade agreements in which contracting is costly, and as a consequence the optimal agreement may be incomplete. Inspite of its simplicity, the model yields rich predictions on the structure of the optimal trade agreement and how this…
Robin Douhan and Magnus Henrekson
In this introductory chapter to a collective volume dealing with the political economy of entrepreneurship, we argue, based on a suggested unifying framework, that political economy is a fruitful approach to entrepreneurship. The importance of…
Steven J. Davis and Magnus Henrekson
Following a severe contraction in the early 1990s, the Swedish economy accumulated a strong record of output growth coupled with a disappointing performance in the labor market. As of 2005, hours worked per person 20–64 years of age are 10.5 percent below…
Sven-Olof Fridolfsson
A government wanting to promote an efficient allocation of resources as measured by the total surplus, should strategically delegate to its competition authority a welfare standard with a bias in favour of consumers. A consumer bias means that some…