Working Papers 2010–2019 (WP817–WP1312)

Health assessments correlate with health outcomes and subjective well-being. Immigrants offer an opportunity to study persistent social influences on health where the social conditions are not endogen…

We use rich data on all business, economics, and engineering graduates in Sweden to study the lack of women among CEOs. A comprehensive battery of graduates’ characteristics explains 40% of the gender…

This paper shows that in online car auctions, resellers are better at appraising the value of the cars they are bidding on than are consumers. Using a unique data set of online car auctions, I show th…

Welfare services are an important part of the Nordic welfare states both financially and for welfare state redistribution. Baumol’s cost disease, Wagner’s law, and population ageing are often said to…

We analyze the effect of ICT and R&D on total factor productivity (TFP) growth across different industries in Sweden. R&D alone is significantly associated with contemporaneous TFP growth, thu…

The purpose of this study is to measure the sensitivity of trade volumes and unit values to agricultural productivity shocks at home and abroad. We find that the unit values of trade flows vary systemat…

This study estimates the impact of financial deregulation on top income shares. Using the novel econometric method of constructing synthetic control groups, we show that the "Big Bang"-deregulations i…

The VC sector is interesting both in its own right and as a proxy for entrepreneurial finance in a broader sense. We highlight the tax treatment of stock options as an important factor for variations…

We construct a multi-country employer-employee data to examine the consequences of employment protection. We identify the effects by comparing worker exit rates between units of the same firm that ope…

Evasive entrepreneurs innovate by circumventing or disrupting existing formal institutional frameworks. These evasions rarely go unnoticed and usually lead to responses from lawmakers and regulators.…

We use a dynamic oligopoly model of entry and exit with store-type differentiation to evaluate how entry regulations affect profitability, market structure and welfare. Based on unique data for all re…

There is great variation in views on and treatment of minorities such as gay men across the world. We are the first to pinpoint what features of societies that are beneficial to gay men’s quality of l…

The paper provides a framework for analysis of remuneration to agents whose task is to make well-informed decisions on behalf of a principal, with managers in large corporations as the most prominent…

We analyze how market design in.uences the bidding behavior in multi-unit procurement auctions where suppliers have uncertain costs and are uncertain about the availability of production units, as in…

Electricity markets are becoming more integrated around the world. However, the knowledge of the effects of different auction formats on suppliers’ strategies in the presence of transmission constrain…

As computer science and complex network theory develop, non-cooperative games and their formation and application on complex networks have been important research topics. In the inter-firm innovation…

Prior literature shows that choices regarding board composition are associated with earnings management. We add to this literature by examining the effects of the presence of a foreign board member on…

We consider a procurement auction, where each supplier has private costs and submits a stepped supply function. We solve for a Bayesian Nash equilibrium and show that the equilibrium has a price insta…

Online Appendix We study the effect of wealth on labor supply using the randomized assignment of monetary prizes in a large sample of Swedish lottery players. We find winning a lottery prize modestly…

This paper examines how consumers react to the financial distress of durable goods manufacturers by looking at the Swedish new car market. We employ a difference-in-differences matching methodology wh…

We estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation using administrative data on Swedish lottery players. A $150,000 windfall gain increases stock ownership probability among pre-lot…

Failure to express minority views may distort the behavior of company boards, committees, juries, and other decision-making bodies. Devising a new experimental procedure to measure such conformity in…

Building on a framework introduced by Chaney and Ossa (2013), we construct a task-based model of the firm’s choice of occupational inputs to examine how that choice varies with greater global engageme…

We explore the potential effects of the first leaders of Sub-Saharan Africa. We first outline a set of theoretical reasons for why leaders may matter particularly at the critical juncture of African i…

This study presents a new database, the Swedish National Wealth Database (SNWD), which contains annual data on private, public and national wealth and sectoral saving rates in Sweden over the past two…

While it might appear self-evident that the trend toward the New Public Management (NPM) in the public administration systems of many Western countries is an outgrowth of neoliberalism, the case of Sw…

In some classes of models, taxes at the owner level are “neutral” and have no effect on firm activity. However, this tax neutrality is sensitive to assumptions and no longer holds in more complex mode…

The afternoon effect, i.e., that prices in a sequence of auctions with identical items are decreasing with the order in which the auctions are terminated, is a frequently observed phenomenon in empiri…

We experimentally prime subjects subliminally prior to charity donation decisions by showing words that have connotations to prosocial values for a very short duration of time (17ms). Our main finding…

Gesell taxes on money holdings have received attention in recent decades as a way of alleviating the zero lower bound on interest rates. Less known is that such a tax was the predominant method used t…

This study examines the governance attributes of post-IPO (initial public offering) retained ownership of private equity in business group constituent firms in contrast to their unaffiliated counterpa…

This paper examines the Swedish industrial reorganization process that took place from 1990-2009. We argue that the early adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) in Swedish industry…

More recently researchers have turned to analyze how the tax structure, rather than the overall tax level, affects economic performance. For instance, several papers have investigated how taxation on…

Tolerance is a distinguishing feature of Western culture: There is a widespread attitude that people should be allowed to say what they want even if one dislikes the message. Still, the degree of tole…

In this paper we challenge the role of Foreign Exchange Risk Management (FXRM) in corporate management. We believe it is fair to characterize FXRM, on the whole, as a legacy activity rather than somet…

The existing literature on determinants of migration flows typically claims that income differences across countries should be a pushing factor for people's movement. We suggest that institutional qua…

EU-level fiscal rules have not been able to prevent the large-scale accumulation of government debt in many eurozone countries. One explanation was major flaws in the rules. Some of these flaws have n…

The paper describes the monetary and fiscal policy frameworks in Sweden and analyses how they were established as well as current challenges. Sweden provides a good example of how deep economic crisis…

The paper answers two questions simultaneously. What is the effect of offshoring on firms' total factor productivity? What is the effect of offshoring on skill-biased technological change? We estimate…

We investigate to what extent ICT and R&D capital is associated with value added growth in the Swedish business sector. By estimating output elasticities based on data for 47 different industries…

We document a significant increase in the sorting of workers by cognitive and non-cognitive skills across Swedish firms between 1986 and 2008. The weight of the evidence suggests that the increase in…

Women are often less willing than men to compete, even in tasks where there is no gender gap in performance. Also, many people experience competitive contexts as stressful and previous research has do…

The integration of electricity markets around the world has increased the importance of congestion between countries/states and has initiated a discussion of how to harmonize network tariffs. This pap…

We show that officer training during the Swedish military service has a strong positive effect on the probability to attain a managerial position later in life. The most intense type of officer traini…

Although private equity firms are often criticized for layoffs, little evidence exists regarding which employees lose their jobs and why. We argue that explanations for the job polarization process ca…

Firms and governments spend billions of dollars on R&D every year. To increase social welfare, the results of R&D must be commercialized so that consumers can benefit from improved products an…

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 agreement between the parties ha…

Wind power generation of electricity has gained popular support because of its low environmental impact and because of its low costs relative to other renewable energy sources. However, concerns have…

This paper is an empirical investigation of how traders react to public news in a market where there are lots of non-scheduled announcements, often arriving simultaneously. Using detailed trade inform…

This paper studies the long-term impact of entrepreneurship education and training in high school on entrepreneurial entry, performance, and survival. Using propensity score matching, we compare three…

It is frequently argued that policymakers should target high-tech firms, i.e., firms with high R&D intensity, because such firms are considered more innovative and therefore potential fast-growers…

Current theoretical predictions of how employment protection affects firm productivity are ambiguous. In this paper, I study the effect of employment protection rules on labor productivity using Swedi…

Online Appendix We use administrative data on Swedish lottery players to estimate the causal impact of substantial wealth shocks on players' own health and their children's health and developmental ou…

Recent research has shown that entrepreneurs who start incorporated firms are fundamentally different from entrepreneurs who start sole proprietorships. This difference suggests that incorporation sta…

In this paper, we ask under what conditions norms can enhance welfare by mitigating moral hazard in income insurance. We point out a particular role of norms, namely to compensate for insurers’ diffic…

An increasingly large share of cross-border acquisitions are undertaken by private equity-firms (PE-firms) and not by traditional multinational enterprises (MNEs). We propose a model of cross-border a…

In this paper, I explore the politically contested association between the degree of capitalism, captured by measures of economic freedom, and the risk and characteristics of economic crisis. After of…

This paper explores the role of retailers as an urban amenity. Using data for Swedish rural and city municipalities for 2002–2008, ‘accessibility to shops’ measures are constructed for the shops in th…

This paper examines policy measures that foster the creation of innovations with high inherent potential and that simultaneously provide the right incentives for individuals to create and expand firms…

Many countries have undertaken central-bank independence reforms, but the years of implementation differ. What explains such differences in timing? This is of interest more broadly, as it sheds light…

This paper examines the development of taxation in Sweden from 1862 to 2013. The examination covers six key aspects of the Swedish tax system: the taxation of labor income, capital income, consumption…

In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits is an important concern in the policy debate. There are strong variations in absence behavior among local geographical areas…

We estimate the effect of college education on business survival using the NLSY79. The endogeneity of both education and business ownership is accounted for by a competing risks duration model augment…

The overwhelming majority of self-employed individuals are not entrepreneurial in the Schumpeterian sense. To unmistakably identify Schumpeterian entrepreneurs, wefocus on self-made billionaires (in U…

Studies have shown that many consumers and businesses fail to invest in energy efficiency improvements despite seemingly ample financial incentives to do so – the so called energy efficiency gap or pa…

This paper investigates the determinants of the productivity of independent retail stores in Sweden by focusing on the impact of market size and regional hierarchy while controlling for several store…

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…

While previous research documents a negative relationship between government size and economic growth, suggesting an economic cost of big government, a given government size generally affects growth d…

We argue that evasive entrepreneurship is an important, although underrated, source of innovation, and provide the first systematic discussion of the concept. We define evasive entrepreneurship as pro…

Though more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the impacts of these reforms on women’s political leadership remain largely unknown. We exploit a quasi-experiment  – a zipper quota imposed…

We study the extent to which people are misinformed about their relative position in the income distribution and the effects on preferences for redistribution of correcting faulty beliefs. We implemen…

This paper examines whether and, if so, why source country heterogeneity exists in foreign direct investment. Using detailed data on all Swedish firms for the period from 1996 to 2009, we find statist…

In medieval Europe, old coins were frequently declared invalid and exchanged for new ones at fixed rates and dates. Here, the question of whether and when such re-coinage was applied in medieval Swede…

This paper asks whether the sensitivity of market long-term interest rates and credit ratings is associated with cross-country differences in informal institutions, measured by social trust. We note a…

Building on recent research in social psychology, this paper analyzes the link between the precision of initial cash offers and M&A outcomes. About one-half of the offers are made at the precision…

In multi-unit auctions, such as auctions of commodities and securities, and financial exchanges, it is necessary to specify rationing rules to break ties between multiple marginal bids. The standard a…

In most OECD-countries, immigrants have lower employment and higher unemployment than natives. This paper compares nine potential explanations of these gaps. Results are obtained for 21–28 countries u…

This paper examines the intensive and extensive margins of carbon leakage. The analysis uses an increase in the Swedish electricity price to identify the impact on imports at the firm and product leve…

There is a scarcity of women and minorities at the apex of political power. This paper formalizes the concept of the glass ceiling for political organizations and builds on previous research to sugges…

This paper studies the evolution of Swedish inheritance taxation since the late nineteenth century to its abolition in 2004. Our contribution is twofold. First, we compute the annual effective inherit…

Inherited wealth has attracted much attention recently, much due to the research by Thomas Piketty (Piketty, 2011; 2014). The discussion has mainly revolved around a long-run contrast between Europe a…

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…

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

In 2008, the Swedish property tax was reformed and a cap on yearly tax liabilities was introduced. A large fraction of owner occupied houses was subject to a substantial decrease in the tax. When the…

In this study I present empirical evidence that employment in family firms is less sensitive to performance and product market fluctuations, both at the industry and at the firm level. This supports t…

This chapter presents historical evidence about Swedish stock prices, dividends, and yields on government fixed-interest securities. Monthly returns are presented since 1901 for stocks, since 1874 for…

Our study combines a near-exhaustive sample of CEOs of Swedish companies with data on their cognitive and non-cognitive ability and height at age 18. Although CEOs, and large-company CEOs in particula…

Global engagement can impact firm organization and the occupations firms need. We use a simple task-based model of the firm’s choice of occupational inputs to examine how that choice varies with globa…

We present a large survey with responses from Swedish firms on their attitudes towards refugees, regarding hiring, job performance, wage setting and discrimination. Generally, firms report positive ex…

Does democracy increase economic growth? Previous literature tends to find a positive effect but does also suffer from possible endogeneity problems: democratization is typically not random and might…

The high and rapidly increasing prevalence of mental illnesses underscores the importance of understanding their causal origins. This paper analyzes one factor at a critical stage of human development…

This paper reviews the long run developments in the distribution of personal income and wealth. It also discusses suggested explanations for the observed patterns. We try to answer questions such as:…

We review and assess the role local institutional framework conditions play in fostering local entrepreneurship. The basic premise is that entrepreneurship is a central driver of economic renewal and…

The contribution of different-sized businesses to job creation continues to attract policymakers’ attention, however, it has recently been recognized that conclusions about size were confounded with t…

This paper examines the development and role of the real estate taxation in Sweden during the period between 1862 and 2010. Real estate has historically been taxed at both the local and state levels i…

This paper is the first to estimate the effects of minimum wages on the unemployment of refugee immigrants. The collectively agreed minimum wages raise both the incidence of unemployment and days in u…

Good health is crucial for human and economic development. In particular poor health in childhood seems to be of utmost concern since it causes irreversible damage and have implications later in life.…

Anecdotal evidence indicates that electricity producers use production failures to disguise strategic reductions of capacity in order to influence prices, but systematic evidence is lacking. We use a…

We conduct a laboratory experiment where third-party spectators can re­distribute resources between two agents, thereby offsetting the conse­quences of controllable and uncontrollable luck. Some spect…

Transparency has become a catchword and in the economic-political debate it is often seen as a universal remedy for all sorts of problems. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the meaning and use of…