News

An alumni network for doctoral students affiliated with IFN and research assistants at the institute recently held a first event. Richard Öhrvall, IFN, who is pursuing a doctorate in political science at Linköping University, presented the results from the recent election and participants discussed possibilities and risks with the even electoral outcome. On election day, Richard commented the election from a local perspective as a part of an expert panel on TV2. The alumni event was opened by Simon Ek, PhD student at Uppsala University, together with Magnus Henrekson and Lars Persson, IFN. After the presentation on the 2018 election, discussions and networking continued over a dinner at the institute.

Magnus Henrekson and Johan Wennström, IFN, write today in the popular science network Quillette that the root cause of the problems in Swedish school "is the curriculum that rejects subject knowledge, gives students excessive responsibility and weakens the role of teacher." When the knowledge vision was combined with market reforms, incentives were created to compete with nothing but knowledge ". Tyler Cowen, professor at George Mason University, also writes about the current study by Henrekson and Wennström. On Facebook, the Quillette article has been shared almost 1,500 times (19th September 2018).

The Alexander Gerschenkron Prize 2018 is awarded to Erik Prawitz, IFN, for the best dissertation in the economic history of an area outside of the United States or Canada. The prize is awarded by the Economic History Association and was announced during the weekend. The title of Prawitz's thesis was On the Move: Essays on the Economic and Political Development of Sweden, including Swedish mass migration to the US. He is the first Swede to receive the prize.

In a new study Fredrik Heyman, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson, IFN, investigates how product market competition and gender-specific management career hurdles affect the gender wage gap for managers.  The paper is presented in a blog post at University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The findings suggest that increased product market competition may not only boost the wages of female managers but also improve overall efficiency.

Timbro has for the first time presented The Sharing Economy Index (TSEI), a report on the size of the global sharing economy. The index has been developed by a group of researchers, including Andreas Bergh, IFN and Lund University. The researchers have analyzed how much Internet traffic companies with share-based services have. The researchers have also counted the number of activities by suppliers like Airbnb and HomeAway across the world. A total of 286 companies have been mapped.

Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, writes a column in the New York Times about research by David Cesarini, New York University and affiliated to IFN, Erik Lindqvist, Stockholm School of Economics and affiliated to IFN, and Robert Östling, Stockholm University. They show that lottery winners live a happier life, contrary to what many previously believed. Cesarini explains that there is a “widespread misperception that science has proved that winning the lottery often makes people miserable.” Wolfers writes that "these effects are remarkably durable. They were still evident up to two decades after a big win. (The researchers lacked the data to trace out even longer-term consequences.)"

August 17-18 IFN hosted the inaugural conference of the Nordic Initiative for Corporate Economics (NICE). NICE will organize a series of conferences to bring together leading scholars located in the Nordic countries or with Nordic. Uniting the researchers is their interest in understanding the corporation, whether this may be from the perspective of accounting, corporate finance, trade economics, labor economics, or industrial organization. 

Anonymously corrected exams result in higher grades for women than for men. This is the result of a study by researchers Björn Tyrefors, IFN, and Joakim Jansson, Stockholm University and IFN. The research also shows that the overall effect of an anonymization reform can only be partly explained by male teachers being a majority among university teachers.

Mårten Blix was on Wednesday invited to a lunch meeting organized by the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts (SFF) to talk about digitalization and the economy. Interest was great for the subject. The topic of his presentation was primarily about how digitalization affects the labor market. He spoke about the job polarization that is happening, that is, that middle-level jobs are disappearing while we can see an increase at the bottom and the top. He also defined gig work and gave a number of examples of different digital platforms and how they work.

In the process of founding Nordic Initiative for Corporate Economics, NICE, Alexander Ljungqvist and Lars Persson have coined the term “corporate economics.” When opening the conference August 17, Ljungqvist explained that “each of us here studies the corporation within the context of our various economic specialties. Our aim at this conference is to establish common ground that bridges our specialties, or what we call corporate economics". Ljungqvist said that by interacting and sharing various perspectives, it is his hope that the researchers will enrich the economic study of corporations.

Data processing is a major and central part of a researcher's everyday life, which Helena Hernnäs and Viking Waldén have learned during the summer of 2018 when they worked as research assistants at IFN. Both are happy with their time at IFN. They say that the atmosphere is open and welcoming and that they have gained good insights into what it means to be a researcher.

The study of corporations is fragmented across various branches of economics and management science (such as industrial organization, accounting, and entrepreneurship), each of which approaches the study of corporations from a different perspective. The lack of an organized way of interacting and learning from each other is perceived as an obstacle for the development of these research fields. “We aim to change this by introducing the Nordic Initiative for Corporate Economics, NICE,” said Professor Lars Persson, IFN, who in cooperation with Professor Alexander Ljungqvist, Stockholm’s School of Economics and affiliated to IFN, has instigated the new network.

Economist writes about the welfare state of tomorrow, today and int he future and finds that the criticisms are growing, both right and left: "On the right, critics accuse it of sucking the dynamism from capitalism and individuals alike." The left, as seen in the grainy nostalgia [...] lays claim to the welfare state as a left-wing creation, and thinks it is under unceasing threat." Economist states that "It is not so much a left-wing creation as a product of an intellectual coalition, in which the critical strand was liberalism". And, the article refers to research by Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson, IFN.

Researchers from IFN were invited by external organizations to be part of numerous panels and presentations during “Almedalen”. This is an eight day event in Visby on the Baltic island of Gotland. This annual event take place at the beginning of July when politicians, opinion leaders, media, corporations and interested Swedes come together and have the opportunity to attend over 4 000 seminars and numerous informal events.
 

For the first time, IFN is organizer of a seminar in Almedalen: "Den svenska kunskapssynen – beror utbildningsproblemen på hur kunskap värderas?"(The Swedish perspective of knowledge: Is the problems in the education system an effect of how knowledge is valued?) will be held .Monday July 2, at 10.00-11.00. The seminar is organized in cooperation with the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum. The panel includes Helene Hellmark Knutsson, Minister for higher education, Erik Bengtzboe, (M), Johan Eklund, Entrepreneurship Forum, Åsa Fahlén, Teachers' Association, and Magnus Henrekson, IFN.
 

Lars Calmfors, IFN, is one of the editors of the anthology "Framtidens arbetsförmedling" (Future Employment Service) (Fores 2018). The publication was presented on Monday with Calmfors as moderator. A message in the book is that politicians should refrain from chasing "the big clip," that is, a radical reform that is carried out in a single shot. Instead, one should study what works well and gradually implement minor improvements in individual areas. One of the commentators at the seminar was Björn Tyrefors, IFN.

Three of IFN's research assistants have been admitted to doctoral studies at Swedish universities starting in the fall of 2018. One of the assistants will continue his career as an analyst and consultant at Copenhagen Economics. All four of them say that the time at IFN has provided a good insight into the work of a researcher and what it takes to succeed.

June 14-15, the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) hosted an international conference on “Entrepreneurship and Innovation: past, present and future”. The attending researchers came from Sweden, USA, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Germany, UK and Canada. The topics included discussions on how entrepreneurial and innovative activity are determined by institutional settings and how they affect society through interactions with the political process, financial markets, labor markets, and product markets.

June 7, Magnus Henrekson, IFN, participated in a panel discussing the Swedish ownership taxes. "Eleven years ago it was chaos – the system was distorted by the way people acted to avoid wealth tax. We would have the same result today if this tax would be reintroduced," said Henrekson. The German researcher Florian Neumeier, Ifo, initially presented a study demonstrating that in developed countries there is no correlation between reduced inequality and increased growth. Also, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv), which organized the seminar, presented a report, concluding that "the tax rate on capital gains and dividends ought to be reduced from today's nominal 30 percent to 20 percent”.

The report Globalisering och svensk arbetsmarknad (Globalization and Swedish Labor Market, SNS 2018), written by Fredrik Heyman, IFN, and Fredrik Sjöholm, Lund University, affiliated to IFN, was presented on June 6, at a seminar organized by SNS (Centre for Business and Policy Studies). The accolades were many from those who commented on the report. "I have picked up the positive keynote of globalization and technological development," said Ylva Johansson (S), Minister for Employment. Carola Lemne, CEO of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv), acknowledged “an excellent report”. Hans Stråberg, Chairman of Atlas Copco and SKF, also welcomed the report explaining that In many instances "the globalization has undeservedly been blamed for many problems in society”.