Joan de Marti and Yves Zenou
We survey the literature on social networks by putting together the economics, sociological and physics/applied mathematics approaches, showing their similarities and differences. We expose, in particular, the two main ways of modeling network formation.…
Fredrik Andersson
The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple framework combining contractual incompleteness with the existence of imperfect but contractible performance measures. Contractual incompleteness gives rise to two regimes, identified with make and buy. The…
Edward J. Anderson, Pär Holmberg and Andrew B. Philpott
Using the concept of market-distribution functions, we derive general optimality conditions for discriminatory divisible-good auctions, which are also applicable to Bertrand games and non-linear pricing. We introduce the concept of o¤er…
Andrea Asoni and Tino Sanandaji
We study the effect of taxation on entrepreneurship, taking into account both the amount of entry and the quality of new ventures. We show that even with risk neutral agents and no tax evasion progressive taxes can increase entrepreneurial entry, while…
Pär Holmberg and David Newbery
The supply function equilibrium provides a game-theoretic model of strategic bidding in oligopolistic wholesale electricity auctions. This paper presents an intuitive account of current understanding and shows how welfare losses depend on the number of…
Tino Sanandaji
Studies of mortgage approvals find that minority borrowers are more likely to be denied loans, even when background variables such as current-year income are held constant. This article demonstrates that relying on current year income when comparing…
Johanna Rickne
Political and legal institutions affect the extent to which the real exchange rates of oil-exporting countries co-move with the oil price. In a simple theoretical model, strong institutions insulate real exchange rates from oil price volatility by…
Harald Edquist
After a severe crisis in the early 1990s, the Swedish economy experienced a boom in productivity growth. Economists have presented three explanations for the fast productivity growth in 1995–2004: market reforms, crisis recovery and the impact of…
Magnus Henrekson
The Industrial Institute of Economic and Social Research (IUI) was founded in 1939. In less than ten years, IUI grew from a small survey bureau to a leading research institute focused on microeconomic research relevant to industrial development. Based on…
Robin Douhan, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
What explains the world-wide trend of pro-entrepreneurial policies? We study entrepreneurial policy in a lobbying model taking into account the conflict of interest between entrepreneurs and incumbents. It is shown that international market integration…
Örjan Sandewall, David Cesarini and Magnus Johannesson
Twins-based estimates of the return to schooling feature prominently in the labor economics literature. The validity of such estimates hinges critically on the assumption that within-pair variation in schooling is explained by factors which are unrelated…
Robin Douhan and Mirjam van Praag
We combine two empirical observations in a general equilibrium occupational choice model. The first is that entrepreneurs have more control than employees over the employment of and accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is…
Magnus Henrekson and Mikael Stenkula
Public policy is currently shifting from SME policy towards entrepreneurship policy, which supports entrepreneurship without directing attention to quantitative goals and specific firms or employment groups. The institutional framework set by public…
Panu Poutvaara, Henrik Jordahl and Niclas Berggren
Recent research has documented that competent-looking political candidates do better in U.S. elections and that babyfaced individuals are generally perceived to be less competent than maturefaced individuals. Taken together, this suggests that babyfaced…
Mikael Elinder
Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the act of voting makes people more positive toward the party or candidate they have voted for. Following Mullainathan and Washington (2009), I test this prediction by using exogenous variation in turnout provided…
Jesper Roine and Daniel Waldensntröm
In this paper we use newly compiled top income share data to estimate common breaks and trends across countries over the twentieth century. By using the most re-cent structural breaks techniques, our approach both confirms previous notions and offers new…
Mikael Stenkula
Does tax policy affect the rate of self-employment in a modern welfare state? This question is analyzed empirically based on Swedish data for the entire post-war period. Available tax data indicate that payroll taxes have had a negative influence on the…
Pehr-Johan Norbäck, Lars Persson and Roger Svensson
We develop a theory of commercialization mode (entry or sale) of entrepreneurial inventions into oligopoly, and show that an invention of higher quality is more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the…
Johan Almenberg and Artashes Karapetyan
We use a survey to identify a consumer bias with regard to different sources of debt-financing. Less salient debt may generate psychological benefits. This should be weighed against the possible economic costs of a sub-optimal capital structure; but low…
Robin Douhan
Can educational institutions explain occupational choice between wage employment and entrepreneurship? This paper follows Lazear's (2005) Jack-of-all-trades hypothesis according to which an individual with a more balanced set of abilities is more likely…
Finn Ostrup, Lars Oxelheim and Clas Wihlborg
Since July 2007 the world economy has experienced a severe financial crisis originating in the U.S. housing market. The crisis has subsequently spread to the financial sectors in European and Asian economies and led to a severe worldwide recession. The…
Anders Akerman
The paper estimates the causal effect of trade liberalisation on aggregate productivity through mechanisms related to firm selection. The construction of a bridge in 2000 across the Öresund Strait linking Copenhagen with Malmö, Sweden's third largest…
Erik Lindqvist and Roine Vestman
We use data from the military enlistment for a large representative sample of Swedish men to assess the importance of cognitive and noncognitive ability for labor market outcomes. The measure of noncognitive ability is based on a personal interview…
Henrik Horn and Petros C. Mavroidis
This paper discusses allocation of burden of proof in environmental disputes in the WTO system. Besides laying down the natural principles that (i) the complainant carries the burden to (ii) make a prima facie case that its claim holds, WTO adjudicating…
Erika Färnstrand Damsgaard
This paper analyzes effects of stronger patent rights on R&D and innovation. It presents a model where the scope of a patent affects an entrant firm's technology choice and thereby the amount of wasteful R&D duplication. The model predicts that…
Henrik Horn
This paper examines the role of the burden of proof (BoP) in National Treatment (NT) disputes under trade agreements. In the situation under study, imports may cause environmental damage, in which case less favorable treatment of imported products may be…
Anders Åkerman and Rikard Forslid
This paper introduces a market size dependent firm entry cost into the Melitz (2003) model. This is a relatively small generalisation, which preserves the analytical solvability of the model. Nevertheless, our model yields several new results that are in…
Joacim Tåg
Media firms sometimes allow consumers to pay to remove advertisements from an advertisement-based product. We formally examine an ad-based monopolist's incentives to introduce this option. When deciding whether to introduce the option to pay, the…
Pär Holmberg, David Newbery and Daniel Ralph
In most wholesale electricity markets generators must submit step-function offers of supply to a uniform price auction, and the market is cleared at the price of the most expensive offer needed to meet realised demand. Such markets can most elegantly be…
Pär Holmberg
This paper characterizes the Nash equilibrium in a pay-as-bid (discriminatory), divisible-good, procurement auction. Demand by the auctioneer is uncertain as in the supply function equilibrium model. A closed form expression is derived. Existence of an…
Magnus Henrekson and Mikael Stenkula
We identify pertinent institutions governing the structure of payoffs with regard to female career progression. Drawing on recent insights in behavioral economics, we hypothesize that interactions between psychological mechanisms and the institutional…
Harald Edquist
In this paper I attempt to replicate for Sweden the Corrado, Hulten and Sichel (2006) and Marrano and Haskel (2006) working papers on spending on intangible assets in the US and the UK. Based on their measurement methods the total spending on intangibles…
Fredrik Andersson
The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a three-layer principal-management-agent model. There is a cost-saving/quality tradeoff in effort provision. The principal chooses between employing an in-house management and contracting with an independent…
Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
We construct a model where incumbents can either acquire basic innovations from entrepreneurs, or wait and acquire developed innovations from entrepreneurial firms supported by venture capitalists. We show that venture-backed entrepreneurial firms have an…
Eva Mörk, Anna Sjögren and Helena Svaleryd
Exploiting the exogenous variation in user fees caused by a Swedish childcare reform, we are able to identify the causal effect of childcare costs on fertility in a context in which childcare enrollment is almost universal, user fees are low, and labor…