Journal of Economic Surveys
Spencer Bastani and Daniel Waldenström
This survey discusses how capital should be taxed in advanced economies. We review the theoretical optimal tax literature, survey empirical studies on the distribution of capital and the distortionary costs of capital taxation, and analyze the desirability of…
Contemporary Economic Policy
Andreas Bergh and Christian Bjørnskov
Social trust is linked to both public sector size and to economic growth, thereby helping to explain how some countries combine high taxes with high levels of economic growth. This paper examines if social trust insulates countries against the negative effects of…
Applied Economics Letters
Ali Ahmed and Mats Hammarstedt
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 with an Arabic-sounding name, sent email inquiries to all Swedish…
Economic Freedom of the World: 2020 Annual Report
Niclas Berggren and Therese Nilsson
This Chapter examines how the market economy affects cultural traits, in particular trust, tolerance, and antisemitism. The results indicate economic freedom generates social trust and tolerance. The relationship to antisemitism is complex. Gains in one area of…
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Maria Abreu and Özge Öner
A large number of studies have analysed the role of individual and geographical determinants of voting behaviour in the context of the recent EU referendum in the UK, but several questions remain. A key unresolved issue is the extent of the interaction between…
Public Choice
Christian Bjørnskov
Recent data show that virtually all military dictatorships that democratize become presidential democracies. I hypothesize that the reason is that military interests are able to coordinate on status-preserving institutional change prior to democratization and prefer…
Research Policy
Per Botolf Maurseth and Roger Svensson
Inventors generally know more about their inventions than what is written down in patent applications. Because they possess this tacit knowledge, inventors may need to play an active role when patents are commercialized. We build on Arora (1995) and model…
Journal of Economic Inequality
Enrico Rubolino and Daniel Waldenström
We study the link between tax progressivity and top income shares. Using variation from Western tax reforms in the 1980s and 1990s and synthetic control method estimation, we find that reductions in tax progressivity had large and lasting positive impacts on top…
Journal of Agricultural Economics
W. Mark Brown, Shon Ferguson and Crina Viju
Using detailed census data covering over 30,000 farms in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada, we document the vast and increasing farm size heterogeneity, and analyse the role of farm size in adapting to the removal of an export subsidy in 1995. Consistent…
Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade
Anders Kärnä, Patrik Gustavsson Tingvall and Daniel Halvarsson
This paper studies the incentives and characteristics of firms that apply for, and eventually receive, one or multiple governmental grants intended to stimulate innovation and growth. The analysis departs from a contest model in which entrepreneurs are free to…
Politics
Richard Öhrvall and Sven Oskarsson
Student mock elections are conducted 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 elections in schools enhance voter turnout in real elections. In this…
International Review of Entrepreneurship
Niklas Elert, Karolin Sjöö and Karl Wennberg
Entrepreneurship research suggests that entrepreneurship education and training can bridge the gender gap in entrepreneurship, but little empirical research exists assessing the validity and impact of such initiatives. We examine a large government-sponsored…
Economics of Education Review
Dany Kessel, Hulda Lif Hardardottir and Björn Tyrefors
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 that this is a very low-cost but effective policy to improve student…
CESifo Forum
Ann-Sofie Isaksson and Andreas Kotsadam
The global economic landscape has changed dramatically since the turn of the millennium: low and middle income countries have been driving global economic growth, new sources of development finance have emerged, and the development cooperation arena has seen…
European Economic Review
Carl Davidson, Fredrik Heyman, Steven Matusz, Fredrik Sjöholm and Susan Chun Zhu
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, and use the model to examine how globalization affects the wage…
Electric Power Systems Research
Mahir Sarfati and Pär Holmberg
Zonal pricing with countertrading (a market-based redispatch) gives arbitrage opportunities to the power producers located in the export-constrained nodes. They can increase their profit by increasing the output in the day-ahead market and decrease it in the…
Journal of Institutional Economics
Niklas Elert and Magnus Henrekson
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 help make institutional and evolutionary economics more concrete,…
Review of Economic Studies
Sandra E. Black, Paul J. Devereux, Petter Lundborg and Kaveh Majlesi
Wealth is highly correlated between parents and their children; however, little is known about the extent to which these relationships are genetic or determined by environmental factors. We use administrative data on the net wealth of a large sample of Swedish…
Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics
Niclas Berggren and Christian Bjørnskov
The degree to which people are satisfied with their lives is affected by many factors. This chapter surveys studies that document the influence of one such factor – formal institutions (i.e., written rules). Such rules, typically laws that enable and constrain…
Journal of Education Policy
Johan Wennström
In a radical school choice reform in 1992, Sweden’s education system was opened to private competition from independent for-profit and non-profit schools funded by vouchers. Competition was expected to produce higher-quality education at lower cost, in both…
Kyklos
Niclas Berggren, Andreas Bergh, Christian Bjørnskov and Shiori Tanaka
We investigate how the life satisfaction of migrants is affected by life satisfaction in their background country and in their new country of residence. In particular, we contribute to the literature by differentiating between first‐ and second‐generation immigrants…
European Review of Agricultural Economics
Shon Ferguson and Johan Gars
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 production shocks in exporting countries affect both traded quantities and…
Journal of Labor Research
Lina Aldén, Mats Hammarstedt and Hanna Swahnberg
We present results from a unique nationwide survey conducted in Sweden on sexual orientation and job satisfaction. Our results show that gay men are more likely to be very satisfied with their job than heterosexual men, both in general and with different aspects of…
Journal of the European Economic Association
Henry Ohlsson, Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldenström
We estimate the importance of inherited wealth in Sweden over the past 200 years. Inheritance is measured both as the annual inheritance flow divided by national income and as the share of inherited wealth in all private wealth. In the 19th century, Sweden differs…
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Elif E. Demiral and Johanna Möllerström
Since the seminal paper of Hoffman et al. (1994), an entitlement effect is believed to exist in the Ultimatum Game, in the sense that proposers who have earned their role (as opposed to having it randomly allocated) offer a smaller share of the pie to their matched…
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Magnus Henrekson and Tino Sanandaji
We compile four hand-collected measures of high-impact Schumpeterian entrepreneurship (venture capital-funded IPOs, self-made billionaire entrepreneurs, unicorn start-ups, and young top global firms founded by individual entrepreneurs) and six measures dominated by…
Applied Economics Letters
Petter Berg, Ola Palmgren and Björn Tyrefors
Admission to high school in Sweden is based on the final grades from junior high. This article compares students’ final mathematics grade with new data from a high school introductory test score in mathematics. Both the grades and the test are based on the same…
Industry and Innovation
Orsa Kekezi and Johan Klaesson
For some time now, the research focusing on Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) has been very active. Observing that knowledge as a production factor is only becoming more and more pronounced, this focus is well-grounded. It is therefore important to examine…
Economic Journal
Youjin Hahn, Asadul Islam, Eleonora Patacchini and Yves Zenou
We randomly assigned 115 primary schools in Bangladesh to one of two settings: children studying in groups with friends and children studying in groups with peers. The groups consisted of four people with similar average cognitive abilities and household…
Scandinavian Economic History Review
Magnus Henrekson, Dan Johansson and Mikael Stenkula
Beginning in the interwar period, industrial foundations became a vehicle for corporate control of large listed firms in Sweden. In the 1990s they were replaced by wealthy individuals who either directly own controlling blocks or who own them through holding…
Journal of Public Economics
Oscar Erixson and Sebastian Escobar
We estimate the extent of inheritance tax avoidance among married decedents in Sweden. Following Kopczuk (2007), we compare estates of decedents who pass away from terminal illness and those of decedents who pass away suddenly, the assumption being that the onset of…
International Economic Review
Roger Svensson and Andreas Westermark
Gesell taxes on money have recently received attention as a way of alleviating the zero lower bound on interest rates. Less known is that such taxes generated seigniorage in medieval Europe for around two centuries. When a Gesell tax was levied, current coins ceased…
The Entrepreneurial Society – A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK
Mark Sanders, Axel Marx and Mikael Stenkula
In this chapter, the editors conclude this volume and draw the most important lessons that can be drawn from the FIRES project. The editors highlight theoretical lessons, methodological innovations, and policy implications.
The Entrepreneurial Society – A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK
Mark Sanders, Mikael Stenkula, James Dunstan, Saul Estrin, Andrea M. Herrmann, Balázs Páger, László Szerb and Elisa Terragno Bogliaccini
In this chapter we outline a reform strategy to promote an entrepreneurial society in the UK. To put it in the words of the Varieties of Capitalism framework, the UK today represents a distinct liberal market economy with a deregulated environment, flexible labor…
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy
Lars Persson, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Charlotta Olofsson
Within the policy debate, there is a fear that large incumbent firms buy small firms’ inventions to ensure that they are not used in the market. We show that such “acquisitions for sleep” can occur if and only if the quality of a process invention…
The Entrepreneurial Society – A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK
Mark Sanders, Mikael Stenkula, Michael Fritsch, Andrea M. Herrmann, Gresa Latifi, Balázs Páger, László Szerb, Elisa Terragno Bogliaccini and Michael Wyrwich
In this chapter, we outline a reform strategy to promote a more entrepreneurial society in Germany. Germany has developed a successful model of capitalism in which high productivity growth is driven by on-the-job learning and firm-specific skill accumulation. The…
European Journal of Law and Economics
Niclas Berggren and Jerg Gutmann
We investigate empirically how electoral democracy and judicial independence relate to personal freedom. While judicial independence is positively and robustly related to personal freedom in all its forms, electoral democracy displays a robust, positive relationship…
The Entrepreneurial Society – A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK
Mark Sanders, Mikael Stenkula, Luca Grilli, Andrea M. Herrmann, Gresa Latifi, Balázs Páger, László Szerb and Elisa Terragno Bogliaccini
In this chapter, we outline a reform strategy to promote an entrepreneurial society in Italy. From a Varieties-of-Capitalism perspective, Italy has been classified as a Mixed or Mediterranean Market Economy. It boasts a vibrant entrepreneurial economy of locally…
Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics
Colin A. Carter and Shon Ferguson
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 a panel regression and Census Agricultural Region data from…
The Entrepreneurial Society – A Reform Strategy for Italy, Germany and the UK
Mark Sanders, Axel Marx and Mikael Stenkula
In this chapter, the editors introduce and motivate the approach in this volume. Although this volume brings together contributions from different authors, the chapters all flow directly from the work that was done in the European H2020 research project Financial and…
Review of International Organizations
Christian Bjørnskov and Martin Rode
Social scientists have created a variety of datasets in recent years that quantify political regimes, but these often provide little data on phases of regime transitions. Our aim is to contribute to filling this gap, by providing an update and expansion of the…
Organization Science
Cédric Gutierrez, Thomas Åstebro and Tomasz Obloj
We study the behavioral drivers of market entry. An experiment allows us to disentangle the impact on entry across different types of markets of two key behavioral mechanisms: overconfidence and attitude toward ambiguity. We theorize and show that the causal effect…
Applied Economics
Margareta Dackehag, Lina Maria Ellegård, Ulf Gerdtham and Therese Nilsson
This paper adds to the small literature on the role of welfare benefits and mental health by studying the relationship between uptake of Social Assistance Benefit (SAB) and objective mental health measures. We use rich longitudinal administrative data on income,…
Economics Letters
Malin Gardberg, Fredrik Heyman, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
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 automation risk have declined in Sweden over the period 1996-2013. This has…
Scandinavian Journal of Economics
Ola Andersson, Håkan J. Holm, Jean-Robert Tyran and Erik Wengström
Decision‐makers often face incentives to increase risk‐taking on behalf of others (e.g., they are offered bonus contracts and contracts based on relative performance). We conduct an experimental study of risk‐taking on behalf of others using a large heterogeneous…
JAMA Network Open
Robert Östling, David Cesarini and Erik Lindqvist
In this study of Swedish lottery players, unearned wealth from random lottery prize winnings was not associated with subsequent healthy lifestyle factors or overall health. The findings suggest that large, random transfers of unearned wealth are unlikely to be…
Journal of Finance
Joan Farre-Mensa, Deepak Hede and Alexander Ljungqvist
We provide evidence on the value of patents to startups by leveraging the quasi‐random assignment of applications to examiners with different propensities to grant patents. Using unique data on all first‐time applications filed at the U.S. Patent Office since 2001,…
Journal of Conflict Resolution
Christian Bjørnskov and Stefan Voigt
The relationship between terrorist activities and states of emergency has never been explored in a cross-country perspective. This article is a first step to change that. Given that a terror act has been committed, what are the factors that lead governments to…
Financial Management
Alexander Ljungqvist, Matthew Richardson and Daniel Wolfenzon
We analyze the determinants of buyout funds’ investment decisions. We argue that when there is imperfect competition for private equity funds, the timing of funds’ investment decisions, their risk‐taking behavior, and their subsequent returns depend on…
North American Journal of Economics and Finance
Nikita Koptyug, Lars Persson and Joacim Tåg
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 stock market to assess the potential effects of this decline and…
Energy Journal
Erik Lundin
I examine the effects of privatization, in the form of acquisitions, in the Swedish electricity distribution sector. As the majority of the distribution networks have remained publicly owned, I use a synthetic control method to identify the effects on price and labor…
Economics & Politics
Andreas Bergh, Irina Mirkina and Therese Nilsson
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 spending, and health and education spending from the ILO and the…
Paul Samuelson: Master of Modern Economics
Thomas Demuynck and Per Hjertstrand
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 preference literature. We depart from Afriat's theorem, which provides…
Journal of Financial Intermediation
Jens Josephson and Joel Shapiro
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 products. We analyze a two-period reputation model in which a CRA…
Review of Economics of the Household
Mats Hammarstedt and Chizheng Miao
We present a study of the employees of self-employed immigrants with unincorporated firms in Sweden using matched employer-employee data from 2014. Non-European immigrants are more likely than natives to have employees in their firms. Furthermore, immigrants,…
The European Union and the Return of the Nation State
Magnus Henrekson, Özge Öner and Tino Sanandaji
This chapter discusses the European Union’s refugee policy. It shows that the common treaties leave considerable discretion to the individual member countries, which allows them to regulate refugee migration while still upholding international treaties. Member…
The European Union and the Return of the Nation State
Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, Karin Leijon, Anna Michalski and Lars Oxelheim
This introductory chapter sheds new light on the increasingly complex relationship between the European Union and the nation-state—in its capacity as EU member state—at a time when its fundamental values are being called into question by prominent…
Economics Letters
Coren Apicella, Elif Demiral and Johanna Möllerström
We study the willingness to compete against self and others in an experiment with over 650 participants, using a modified version of the Niederle and Vesterlund (2007) design. We show that introducing a possibility to self-compete, in addition to the standard…
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Niclas Berggren and Christian Bjørnskov
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 perceived corruption and de facto judicial accountability to…
Journal of Institutional Economics
Andreas Bergh
To explain the coexistence of economic freedom and big government, this paper distinguishes between big government in the fiscal sense of requiring high taxes, and big government in the Hayekian sense of requiring knowledge that is difficult to acquire from a central…
International Journal of Industrial Organization
Erik Lundin and Thomas Tangerås
Horizontal shifts in bid curves observed in wholesale electricity markets are consistent with Cournot competition. Quantity competition reduces the informational requirements associated with evaluating market performance because the price-cost margins of all…
Review of Financial Studies
Andrew Ellul, Marco Pagano and Annalisa Scognamiglio
We establish that the labor market helps discipline asset managers via the impact of fund liquidations on their careers. Using hand-collected data on 1,948 professionals, we find that top managers working for funds liquidated after persistently poor relative…
Journal of Economic Theory
Philip Ushchev and Yves Zenou
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 microfoundation of the linear-in-means model and investigate its…
Political Science Research and Methods
Cara Wong, Jake Bowers, Daniel Rubenson, Mark Fredrickson and Ashlea Rundlett
To understand the relationship between place and politics, we must measure both political attitudes and the ways in which place is represented in the minds of individuals. In this paper, we assess a new measure of mental representation of geography, in which survey…
PLOS One
Christian Bjørnskov and Nicolai Foss
Using data from the European Value Survey, covering more than 300,000 respondents in 32 countries between 2002 and 2012, we offer new insight into the consequences for subjective well-being of self-employment. We hypothesize that the positive link between…
Economic Inquiry
Ola Andersson, Håkan J. Holm and Erik Wengström
We conduct a contest experiment to study if spread seeking and effort can be managed when participants can invest in increasing both the mean and the spread of an uncertain performance variable. Subjects are treated with different prize schemes and in accordance with…
Journal of Political Economy
Petra Persson
Social insurance is often linked to marriage. Existing evidence suggests small marital responses to financial incentives and stems from settings where benefits are realized in the near future. I analyze how linking survivors insurance to marriage affects the marriage…
IZA World of Labor
Magnus Henrekson
Economic growth requires factor reallocation across firms and continuous replacement of technologies. Labor market institutions influence economic dynamism by their impact on the supply of a key factor, skilled workers to new and expanding firms, and the shedding of…