Working Papers 2010–2019 (WP817–WP1312)

Individuals with ancestry from countries with advanced information technology in 1500 AD, such as movable type and paper, adopt the internet faster than those with less advanced ancestry. The analysis…

We ask whether, as many seem to think, corruption worsens, and judicial accountability improves, inequality, and investigate this empirically using data from 145 countries 1960–2014. We relate perceiv…

This paper proposes new power indices for revealed preference tests. The indices are based on a model of irrational consumption behavior where the consumer randomly allocates a certain fraction of exp…

The variability of solar and wind generation increases transmission network operating costs associated with maintaining system stability. These ancillary services costs are likely to increase as a sha…

For previously identified weakly separable blockings of goods and assets, we construct aggregates using four superlative index numbers, the Fisher, Sato-Vartia, Törnqvist and Walsh, two non-superlativ…

This paper uses a large-scale two-level randomized experiment to study direct and displacement effects of job search assistance. Our findings show that the assistance reduces unemployment among the tr…

We present the theory of the collaborative innovation bloc (CIB), an evolving system of innovation within which activity takes place over time. We show how the application of the CIB perspective can h…

In recent years, commercial banks have substantially reduced the number of their branch offices. We address the question of whether or not the increased distance to lenders caused by branch office clo…

Recent micro-level studies have suggested that globalization - in particular, economic globalization and trade with China - breeds political polarization and populism. This study examines whether or n…

We develop a model in which ethnic minorities can either assimilate to the majority's norm or reject it by trading off higher productivity and wages with a greater social distance to their culture of…

Although the linear-in-means model is the workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects, its theoretical properties are understudied. In this study, we develop a social-norm model that provides a…

Consequences of social trust are comparatively well studied, while its societal determinants are often subject to debate. This paper studies both in the context of Catalan attempts to secede from Spai…

We investigate two parallel school reforms in Sweden to assess the long-run health effects of education. One reform only increased years of schooling, while the other increased years of schooling but…

We examine the relationship between occupational automation probabilities and employment dynamics over nearly two decades. We show that employment and wage shares of occupations with a higher automati…

We estimate the impact of the 2012 removal of the Canadian Wheat Board’s (CWB) single-desk on the spatial pattern of durum wheat acres in Western Canada. We analyze changes in durum seeded acres with…

Correct estimates of import demand elasticities are essential for measuring the gains from trade and predicting the impact of trade policies. We show that estimates of import demand elasticities hinge…

We study whether a woman's labor supply as a young adult is shaped by the work behavior of her adolescent peers' mothers. Using detailed information on a sample of U.S. teenagers who are followed over…

We study how friendship shapes students' political opinions in a natural experiment. We use the indicator whether two students were exogenously assigned to a short-term \integration group", unrelated…

We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We show that failing…

This paper proposes a theory of gazelle growth in which gazelles can either grow organically or by acquisitions. In the model, there are three types of firms: incumbent, target, and gazelle. We show t…

Capacity mechanisms are increasingly used in electricity market design around the world yet their role remains hotly debated. In this paper, we introduce a new benchmark model of a capacity mechanism…

In recent years, the number of listed companies has been declining in many countries across the world. This paper provides a selective survey of the literature on the real economic effects of the stoc…

We assess the empirical literature on the determinants of spatial variations in new-firm formation rates by undertaking a systematic empirical analysis of the relative roles of different demand- and s…

In this study we examine the passage of a reform to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures in Sweden in 2003. Following publication of medical evidence showing that pregnancy success rates could be m…

Recently, policy makers worldwide have suggested and passed legislation to ban mobile phone use in schools. The influential (and only quantitative) evaluation by Beland and Murphy (2016), suggests tha…

While workplace flexibility is perceived to be a key determinant of maternal labor supply, less is known about fathers’demand for flexibility or about intra-household spillover effects of flexibility init…

Opponents of big-box entry argue that large retail establishments generate noise and other types of pollution and a variety of negative externalities associated with traffic. Big-box advocates, on the…

This paper examines whether social spending cushions the effect of globalization on within-country inequality. Using information on disposable and market income inequality and data on overall social s…

We are grateful for the comments to our article, and for the opportunity to respond to them. In our original contribution, we argued that the application of the EOE perspective could help make Austria…

This paper investigates the role of gender identity norms in shaping men's and women's time allocation, based on observed behavior following a change in the market penalty for adopting prescriptive no…

Tolerance – respecting individual choice and differences among people – is a prominent feature of modern European culture. That immigrants embrace this kind of liberal value is arguably important for…

Coups and regime transitions are events that typically are intended to change the basic institutional framework of a country. Which specific policies change and the consequences of these changes never…

Trust and entrepreneurship are seen as key ingredients of long-term prosperity. However, it is not clear how these two are related. Part of the confusion can be traced back to the measurement of entre…

Beginning in the interwar period, industrial foundations became a vehicle for the corporate control of large listed firms in Sweden, but in the 1990s they were replaced by wealthy individuals who eith…

Zonal pricing electricity markets operate sequentially. First, the suppliers compete in a spot market. Second, to alleviate the congestion in the transmission line, in a redispatch market, the supplie…

The meritocratic fairness ideal implies that inequalities in earnings are regarded as fair only when they reflect differences in performance. Consequently, implementation of the meritocratic fairness…

Do foreign venture capitalists help the domestic economy, or hamper it by slowing down growth, potentially moving economic activity away? This paper addresses this long-standing policy question by exa…

While the association between economic freedom and long-run economic growth is well documented, the parallel research literature on the distributional consequences of economic freedom is full of confl…

This paper examines gender differences in optimism about the economy. We measure optimism using Swedish survey data in which respondents stated their beliefs about the country’s future economic situat…

Since Paul Samuelson introduced the theory of revealed preference, it has become one of the most important concepts in economics. This chapter surveys some recent contributions in the revealed prefere…

This note describes how research on the link between globalization and openness has changed over time. Early contributions assumed that countries develop welfare states to compensate for volatility ca…

We present a field experiment conducted in order to explore the existence of ethnic discrimination in contact with public authorities. Two fictitious parents, one with a Swedish-sounding name and one…

Are quantitative measures driven by small business activity also valid proxies for high-impact Schumpeterian entrepreneurship? We compile four hand-collected measures of high-impact Schumpeterian entr…

Personal freedom is highly valued by many and a central element of liberal political philosophy. Although personal freedom is frequently associated with electoral democracy, developments in countries…

Globalization has increased in recent decades, resulting in structural changes of production and labor demand. This paper examines how the increased global engagement of firms affects the structure of…

Entry by multinational enterprises (MNEs) into emerging markets has increased substantially over the last decades. Many of these MNE entries have taken place in concentrated markets. To capture these…

This study shows that in Sweden, contrary to other European countries, refugees have been disproportionately placed in peripheral and rural areas with high unemployment and rapid native depopulation w…

The European Union officially proclaims to have a common asylum policy. However, the common treaties leave a great deal of discretion to the individual member countries, which allow them to regulate r…

Electricity markets employ different congestion management methods to handle the limited transmission capacity of the power system. This paper compares production efficiency and other aspects of nodal…

Admission to high school in Sweden is based on the final grades from junior high. This paper compares students’ final mathematics grade with new data from a high school introductory test score in math…

Empirical studies have estimated a big range of consumption response sizes to changes in house prices. Using a quasi-experiment, we estimate a shock of −19.4 percent to house prices in the area surrou…

Complete financial markets allow countries to share their consumption risks internationally, thereby creating welfare gains through lower volatility of aggregate consumption. Using a panel of 116 coun…

We study how attitudes to inheritance taxation are influenced by information about the role of inherited wealth in society. Using a randomized experiment in a register-linked Swedish survey, we find t…

Being able to separate temporary global macroeconomic influences – caused by fluctuations in exchange rates, interest rates and inflation – from intrinsic performance – related to a superior product,…

Student mock elections are carried out in schools around the world in an effort to increase political interest and efficacy among students. There is, however, a lack of research on whether mock electi…

In centralized markets, producers submit detailed cost data to the day-ahead market, and the market operator decides how much should be produced in each plant. This differs from decentralized markets…

We investigate the effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on the propensity to hire workers from unemployment and active labor market programs (ALMPs), utilizing a reform that decreased dis…

We analyze the relationship between residence in an ethnic enclave and immigrants’ labor market integration with respect to finding a first job in the receiving country. The analysis distinguishes bet…

In part I of this paper, we proposed a Mixed-Integer Linear Program (MILP) to analyze imperfect competition of oligopoly producers in two-stage zonal power markets. In part II of this paper, we propos…

This paper is part I of a two-part paper. It proposes a two-stage game to analyze imperfect competition of producers in zonal power markets with a day-ahead and a real-time market. We consider strateg…

The idea that all types of economic freedom – including limited government – promote prosperity is challenged by the fact that some countries successfully combine a large public sector with high taxes…

The relevance of residential segregation and ethnic enclaves for labor market sorting of immigrants has been investigated by a large body of literature. Previous literature presents competing argument…

International investment agreements have become increasingly controversial. The agreements are alleged to be beset with a large number of  deficiencies that harm host countries in particular. For inst…

Globalization affects the mix of jobs available in an economy and the rate at which workers gain skills. We develop a model in which firms differ in terms of productivity and workers differ in skills,…

International investment agreements typically permit foreign investors to litigate against host countries (Investor-State Dispute Settlement, ISDS). Yet, common criticism holds that host countries wou…

This paper studies the determinants of economies of scope and quantifies their impact on the extensive and intensive product margins in retail. We use a framework based on a multiproduct technology to…

Many currencies, especially those of countries with negative net foreign assets, tend to depreciate during times of financial turbulence. Using a panel of 26 currencies over the period 1/1997 – 6/2016…

It has been argued that the Swedish tax system has favored firm control through industrial foundations, which should have inhibited entrepreneurship and economic growth. However, research has been ham…

This paper studies the location decisions of Swedish start-up independent schools. It makes use of the great expansion of independent schools following a reform implemented in 1992 to test what local…

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the p…

The world’s first multinational electricity market was formed with the creation of the Nordic power exchange, Nord Pool. We analyze the incentives to undertake transmission network investment in the c…

We present results from a unique nationwide survey conducted in Sweden on sexual orientation and job satisfaction. Our results show that gay men, on average, seem more satisfied with their job than he…

We study to what degree authors who publish in the five most prestigious journals in economics have previously published there and in which world region they are based. Although still high, the concen…

Government debt is high in most developed countries, and while it may reflect short-term attempts to kick-start the economy in times of crisis through fiscal stimulus, the longer-term consequences ris…

Sweden combines a vibrant market economy with a large public sector. This combination of public and private also characterizes the country’s comprehensive tax-financed welfare services. More than one-…

We study the political effects of mass emigration to the United States in the 19th century using data from Sweden. To instrument for total emigration over several decades, we exploit severe local fros…

The poor performance of credit ratings of structured finance products in the financial crisis has prompted investigation into the role of credit rating agencies (CRAs) in designing and marketing these…

We present a study of immigrant self-employment in Sweden using the recent matched employer-employee data from 2014. We find large variations in self-employment rates among immigrant groups as well as…

More than 50 years after independence, the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa remain poor with limited rates of economic growth. One of the most striking features of economic development on t…

Throughout history and across countries, women appear more likely than men to enter politics at the heels of a close relative or spouse. We provide a theoretical explanation for this dynastic bias in…

This paper studies customer discrimination against fictive male and female food truck owners with Arabic names on a Swedish University campus using a web-based experiment. Students at a Swedish univer…

The aim of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the most crucial determinants of success for firms applying for public R&D grants. Previous studies have been limited to firm level da…

The media often cast foreign private equity firms as villains who gamble with local jobs. We use detailed registry data from Sweden to show that foreign buyouts have not affected workers' labor market…

This paper compares life satisfaction among the elderly (61 years of age or older) who are self-employed, wage-employed or out of the labour force in Sweden with the help of a unique survey. Sweden is…

The Swedish school system suffers from profound problems with teacher recruitment and retention, knowledge decline, and grade inflation. Absenteeism is high, and psychiatric disorders have risen sharp…

The purpose of this study is to measure the sensitivity of traded quantities and trade unit values to agricultural production shocks. We develop a general equilibrium model of trade in which productio…

In this paper, we first present novel evidence of grading bias against women at the university level. This is in contrast to previous results at the secondary education level. Contrary to the gender c…

This paper explores the dynamics of press freedom around events that threaten or oust the incumbent regime of a country. While democracies on average grant the press more freedom, our theoretical star…

Using data on all Swedish computing startups founded 2007–2015, we find a systematic positive relationship between the propensity of a computing firm to reach customers globally via digital platforms…

We evaluate the impact on earnings, pensions, and further labor market outcomes of two parallel educational reforms increasing instructional time in Swedish primary school. The reforms extended the an…

We argue that scholars in the Austrian tradition of economics should incorporate the notion of a collaborative innovation bloc into their study of spontaneous market order. We demonstrate how successf…

Using detailed census data covering over 40,000 farms in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada, we document the vast and increasing farm size heterogeneity, and analyze the role of farm size in a…

We surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players about their psychological well-being and analyzed the data following pre-registered procedures. Relative to matched controls, large-prize winners…

The dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) is today the most active dispute resolution forum in the world. However, its success has also led to increased processing time of disputes, which, in turn, incre…

We provide empirical evidence that uncertainty (rather than risk) and optimism are distinctive characteristics of high-impact entrepreneurial firms (recently listed firms) relative to old, incumbent f…

In Sweden, a trust-based system of school performance evaluation meets a market-oriented school system with liberal entry conditions for voucher-funded private providers. National standardized tests a…

The basic principle governing the development of the accounting framework is the choice of appropriate comparators. Firstly, when measuring contributions to job creation, we should focus on just job c…

The current study provides the first experimental test of the compromise effect, i.e. the tendency to choose middle options, in a naturally occurring setting. Simultaneously, I propose and evaluate a…

The paper reports the first experimental study on people’s fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consi…

We study a reform by which a standardized model of choice and competition was introduced in tax-financed home care in a majority of Swedish municipalities. The market for home care is of particular in…