Martin Ljunge
This paper estimates the effect of trust on internet use by studying the general population as well as second generation immigrants in 29 European countries with ancestry in 87 nations. There is a significant positive effect of trust on internet use. The…
Martin Ljunge
This paper estimates the intergenerational transmission of trust by studying second generation immigrants in 29 European countries with ancestry in 87 nations. There is significant transmission of trust on the mother’s side. The transmission is…
Pär Holmberg and Andrew Philpott
Transport constraints limit competition and arbitrageurs.possibilities of exploiting price differences between commodities in neighbouring markets. We analyze a transport-constrained network with local demand shocks, where spatially distributed oligopoly…
Ola Bengtsson, Tino Sanandaji and Magnus Johannesson
Self-employment is often used as synonymous with entrepreneurship. We define entrepreneurship as having the ambition to grow or innovate. As part of a large and representative survey in Sweden, business owners were asked to self-identify as either…
Pontus Braunerhjelm and Magnus Henrekson
The purpose of this research endeavor—in the form of eight articles—to be published in 2013 in a Special Section of Industrial and Corporate Change is to further our understanding of the extent, character and orientation of entrepreneurial…
Åsa Hansson, Susan Porter and Susan Perry Williams
Economists and political scientists have long been interested in factors that affect the statutory tax rate on businesses set by federal governments. In this study, we examine the impact of political and economic factors on several measures of tax rates…
Christopher T. Dawes, Magnus Johannesson, Erik Lindqvist, Peter Loewen, Robert Östling, Marianne Bonde and Frida Priks
We test whether generosity is related to political preferences and partisanship in Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States using incentivized dictator games. The total sample consists of more than 5,000 respondents. We document that…
Johannes Mauritzen
The most common reason for scrapping a wind turbine in Denmark is to make room for a newer turbine. The decision to scrap a wind turbine is then highly dependent on an opportunity cost that comes from the interaction of scarce land resources,…
Florin Maican and Matilda Orth
Quantifying possible ineciencies stemming from regulation is important to both policymakers and researchers. We use a dynamic structural model to evaluate the role of local market entry regulations in the productivity of retail trade. Our model is exible…
Andreas Bergh, Günther Fink and Richard Öhrvall
In this paper, we use data from a corruption survey conducted among top politicians and high level civil servants in 290 Swedish municipalities in 2007 to investigate the effects of government size on corruption. We construct several measures of…
Pär Holmberg and Bert Willems
We demonstrate how suppliers can take strategic speculative positions in derivatives markets to soften competition in the spot market. In our game, suppliers first choose a portfolio of call options and then compete with supply functions. In equilibrium…
Gunnar Du Rietz, Magnus Henrekson and Daniel Waldenström
This paper studies the evolution of the modern Swedish inheritance taxation from its introduction in 1885 to its abolishment in 2004. A thorough description is offered of the basic principles of the tax, including underlying ideas and ambitions, tax…
Pehr-Johan Norbäck, Jing-Lin Duanmu and Per Skedinger
In this paper we show, theoretically and empirically, that stronger employment protection legislation (EPL) in a host country has important and differing effects on the various activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Using micro data on affiliates…
Per Botolf Maurseth and Roger Svensson
Globalization, high growth rates in high-tech industries, growing emerging markets and harmonization of patent institutions across countries have stimulated patenting in foreign markets. We use a simple model of international patenting, where the decision…
Samuel Lee and Petra Persson
The constraint on informal finance is commonly taken to be high costs and limited supply. But the majority of informal investors – family and friends – is often willing to supply funds at negative returns, and yet many borrowers tap family and…
Robert S. Erikson, Olle Folke and James M. Snyder, Jr.
It is commonly argued in the media that a presidential candidate will be helped in a state by having a governor of the same party in office. However, there is little research to support this claim. To address this question we use a regression…
Anders Böhlmark, Erik Grönqvist and Jonas Vlachos
The role of school principals largely resembles that of corporate managers and the leadership they provide are often viewed as a crucial component for educational success. We estimate the impact of individual principals on various schooling outcomes, by…
Shon Ferguson
This paper shows that the R&D intensity of an industry plays an important role in determining international trade patterns via its e¤ect on scale economies. I first develop a model of trade with heterogeneous firms where firms compete with each…
Mats Lundahl and Fredrik Sjöholm
Timor-Leste’s first ten years of independence have been turbulent and a large share of the population remains poor. Broad-based improvements in living standards will require improvements in agricultural production since most Timorese are subsistence…
Gabriel Heller Sahlgren
Declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy necessitate a higher labor participation rate among older people in order to sustain pension systems and boost economic growth. At the same time, researchers have only recently begun to pay…
Aron Berg, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
This paper proposes a cross-border M&A model with financially constrained owners in which the identity of the buyer and seller can be determined. We show that policies blocking foreign acquisitions to protect the domestic industry can be…
Erika Färnstrand Damsgaard, Pehr-Johan Norbäck, Lars Persson and Helder Vasconcelos
Entrepreneurs face higher commercialization costs than incumbents. We show that this implies that entrepreneurs will choose more risky projects than incumbents, aiming to reduce their high expected marginal commercialization cost. However, entrepreneurs…
Shon Ferguson and Sara Formai
The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms’ integration opportunities affect the way contract…
Johanna Rickne
Fifteen years after the introduction of highly ambitious social insurance programs for urban Chinese workers, a large number of them remain un-insured. This paper examines the relationship between labor market conditions and social insurance participation…
Olle Folke and Johanna Rickne
A large literature has studied the context that affects women’s numerical representation, but few have moved beyond numbers to study the drivers of a gender gap in political influence among elected politicians. Using panel data for the careers of…
Ola Bengtsson and John R. M. Hand
Despite the central role played by human capital in entrepreneurship, little is known about how employees in entrepreneurial firms are compensated and incentivized. We address this gap in the literature by studying 18,935 non-CEO compensation contracts…
Sven-Olof Fridolfsson and Thomas Tangerås
Green certificates are the main instrument for promoting renewable electricity (RES-E) in Sweden. But certificates cover only a limited share of total RES-E production. Under partial coverage, crowding out may arise whereby costly new RES-E replaces…
Niclas Berggren, Sven-Olov Daunfeldt and Jörgen Hellström
Central banks have been made more independent in many countries. A common rationale has been the existence of a credibility (or lack-of-trust) problem for monetary policy. This indicates a possible and until now unexplored link between social trust and…
Fredrik Heyman and Patrik Gustavsson Tingvall
Previous research has recognized that weak institutions can hamper investments and alter patterns of trade. However, little is known about the impact of institutional quality on offshoring. This is surprising, given that offshoring has become an important…
Niclas Berggren and Therese Nilsson
Tolerance has the potential to affect both economic growth and wellbeing. It is therefore important to discern its determinants. We add to the literature by investigating whether the degree to which economic institutions and policies are market-oriented…
Gene M. Grossman, Henrik Horn and Petros C. Mavroidis
The primary objective of most trade agreements is to restrain members' use of trade policies for protectionist purposes. But it would be pointless to restrict the application of border instruments without regulating the possible use of domestic…
Gene M. Grossman and Henrik Horn
The purpose of this study is to present to readers with limited training in economics the perspective that most international trade economists bring to the study of trade agreements. It focuses on the main approach in the literature, which sees these…
Pär Holmberg and Ewa Lazarczyk
Wholesale electricity markets use different market designs to handle congestion in the transmission network. We compare nodal, zonal and discriminatory pricing in general networks with transmission constraints and loop flows. We conclude that in large…
Enrico Moretti and Per Thulin
We show that every time a local economy generates a new job by attracting a new business in the traded sector, a significant number of additional jobs are created in the non-traded sector. This multiplier effect is particularly large for jobs with high…
Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson
Since the sinking of the Titanic, there has been a widespread belief that the social norm of ‘women and children first’ gives women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains and crew give priority to passengers. We…
Carl Davidson, Fredrik Heyman, Steven Matusz, Fredrik Sjöholm and Susan Chun Zhu
Recent theoretical analysis suggests that a reduction in the cost of exporting increases the degree of assortative matching between workers and firms in export-oriented industries. Changes that reduce the cost of imports have an ambiguous impact on…
Martin Karlsson, Therese Nilsson and Stefan Pichler
We study the impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on economic performance in Sweden. The pandemic was one of the severest and deadliest pandemics in human history, but it has hitherto received only scant attention in the economic literature –…
Ola Andersson, Cédric Argenton and Jörgen W. Weibull
In games with continuum strategy sets, we model a player’s uncertainty about another player’s strategy, as an atomless probability distribution over the other player’s strategy set. We call a strategy profile (strictly) robust to…
Erika Färnstrand Damsgaard and Marie Thursby
This paper analyzes how institutional differences affect university entrepreneurship. We focus on ownership of faculty inventions, and compare two institutional regimes; the US and Sweden. In the US, the Bayh-Dole Act gives universities the right to own…
Johannes Mauritzen
It is well established within both the economics and power system engineering literature that hydro power can act as a complement to large amounts of intermittent energy. In particular hydro power can act as a "battery" where large amounts of…
Karin Edmark and Roger Gordon
This paper makes use of individual data for 2004 to 2008 on owners of closely-held businesses in Sweden to estimate the role of both tax and non-tax determinants in the choice to be a closely-held corporation vs. a proprietorship. While lower-income…
Martin Olsson and Joacim Tåg
Private equity firms are often criticized for laying off workers, but the evidence on who loses their jobs and why is scarce. This paper argues that explanations for job polarization also explain layoffs after private equity buyouts. Buyouts reduce agency…
Niclas Berggren and Christian Bjørnskov
Social and cultural determinants of economic institutions and outcomes have come to the forefront of economic research. We introduce religiosity, measured as the share for which religion is important in daily life, to explain institutional quality in the…
Tino Sanandaji
Relying on Forbes Magazine annual rankings for two decades, 1625 billionaires and their countries of birth and residence are identified, most of whom are self-made entrepreneurs. 13 percent of billionaires reside in a country other than that of their…
Thomas Tangerås
I generalize the workhorse model of network competition to include income effects in demand. Empirical work has shown income effects to be positive and statistically significant. Income effects deliver theoretical results consistent with regulatory…
Martin Andersson and Steven Klepper
We analyze the rate of formation, the characteristics, and the performance of different types of new firms in Sweden over a decade. Comparisons to Denmark, Brazil, and the U.S. suggest that the environment for new firm formation in Sweden is not markedly…
Karin Edmark, Che-Yuan Liang, Eva Mörk and Håkan Selin
Over the last twenty years we have seen an increasing use of in-work tax subsidies to encourage labor supply among low-income groups. In Sweden, a non-targeted earned income tax credit was introduced in 2007, and was reinforced in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The…
Andreas Bergh and Therese Nilsson
We show theoretically that the poor can benefit from price changes induced by higher income inequality. As the number of poor in a society increases, or when the income difference between rich and poor increases, the market for products aimed towards the…
Therese Nilsson and Andreas Bergh
We use individual and multi-level data from Zambia on child nutritional health to test the absolute income hypothesis (AIH), the relative income hypothesis (RIH) and the income inequality hypothesis (IIH). The results confirm a non-linear positive…
Florin Maican and Matilda Orth
The entry of large (“big-box”) stores and the accompanying drastic decrease in the overall number of stores represent a striking trend in retail. We use a dynamic model to measure the impact of the entry of large stores on incumbents’…
Josh Lerner and Joacim Tåg
We survey the literature on venture capital and institutions and present a case study comparing the development of the venture capital market in the US to Sweden. Our literature survey underscores that the legal environment, financial market development,…
Andreas Haufler, Pehr-Johan Norbäck and Lars Persson
Many governments promote small businesses for the dual reasons of fostering ‘breakthrough’ innovations and employment growth. In this paper we study the effects of tax and subsidy policies on entrepreneurs’ choice of riskiness of an…
Joshua S. Gans and Lars Persson
This paper examines the interaction between intellectual property protection and competition policy on the choice of entrepreneurs with respect to commercialization as well as the rate of innovation. We find that stronger intellectual property protection…
Karin Edmark and Kajsa Hanspers
This study tests whether individuals who grow up with parents on welfare benefits are themselves more (or less) likely to be welfare recipients as young adults, compared to individuals who grow up in non-welfare households. We use the sibling difference…
Tino Sanandaji and Peter T. Leeson
Existing studies of entrepreneurship focus on entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is typically trivial: self-employed persons. This paper investigates entrepreneurs whose individual contribution to wealth creation is enormous:…