Publications

What is the effect of coups d’état on repression? Do ‘bad’ coups against democracies decrease respect for physical integrity rights? Does it make a difference whether a coup d’état is staged by the mi…

We use data on estate divisions to study to whom altruistic preferences are directed. Insofar bequests are given without the prospect of future personal benefits in mind, they are presumably intrinsic…

Since the 1990s, the Swedish education market has gone through a dramatic transformation due to the introduction of voucher-funded independent schools. We make use of data on school applications to co…

Water is an increasingly scarce resource. It is often distributed such that consumers do not face any marginal cost of consumption, creating a common pool problem. For instance, tenants in multi-famil…

This paper aims to find country-level factors that explain the rise of populist parties in European democracies. While populism is often connected to inequality, we note that right-wing populist parti…

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can benefit host countries by facilitating access to sophisticated technologies, good management and global value chains. However, multinational firms have many alterna…

We present and discuss evidence on electric-vehicle rollout in The Netherlands and Norway, two forerunners in this area. We demonstrate that the uptake of electric vehicles is essentially driven by fi…

The opponents of big‐box entry argue that large retail establishments generate a variety of negative externalities. The advocates, on the contrary, argue that access to a large retail market not only…

All organizations need to allocate labor to production and administration. In many cases – particularly within the public sector – the optimal allocation is far from obvious. Indeed, vocal concerns ha…

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…

Standing at 24% in 2018, India’s female labour force participation is only half of the global average (48%). At the same time, India has one of the widest gender wage gaps in the world and women are l…

We study the causal effects of previous experience and language skills when newly arrived refugees in Sweden apply for job openings by means of a field experiment. Applications were sent from randomly…

Populism is a foreseeable reaction against the limited moral conception of society offered by both traditional left and right parties. Traditional parties have effectively rendered many voters homeles…

In this essay, we discuss the requirements of a successful management of a company's exposure to foreign exchange risks. We argue that the company's performance is affected by foreign exchange risks a…

Media freedom is often curtailed in the wake of terrorist attacks. In this contribution, we ask whether constitutional provisions that are intended—directly or indirectly—to protect media freedom afec…

Promoters claim that bitcoin is a new type of money, reduces transactions costs by abandoning intermediaries and will become a safe asset that they call “digital gold”. In this book, we dissect these…

We use tax-register data on all firms in Sweden to document the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on firm sales, tax payments, and sick pay. The pandemic impact is identified using within-year, between-…

We measure the distributional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic using newly released population register data in Sweden. Monthly earnings inequality increased during the pandemic, and the key driver is…

Nearly 2700 highly potent international investment agreements protect foreign investment against host country policies. This paper analyzes the design and implications of their contentious provisions…

While recent research finds strong evidence that birth order affects outcomes such as education, IQ scores, earnings, and health, the evidence for effects on political outcomes is more limited. Using…

This article presents a methodology for empirically identifying the key player, whose removal from the network leads to the optimal change in aggregate activity level in equilibrium [Ballester, C., Ca…

Differentiating various types of entrepreneurs provides clues to the puzzle of why top-down policies often fail to create Schumpeterian entrepreneurship and the ecosystems where it thrives. Schumpeter…

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the incentives of national transmission system operators (TSOs) to supply cross-border interconnection capacity in an international electricity market. Ou…

We study competition between political parties in repeated elections with probabilistic voting, allowing a multidimensional policy space and multiple political parties. This model entails multiple equ…

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

This note describes how research on the link between economic openness and government size has changed over time. Early interpretations suggested that countries develop welfare states to compensate fo…

In 2009, Sweden launched a freedom-of-choice reform that gave municipalities the option to introduce standardized quasi-markets in social services. The reform was initially popular to adopt in home ca…

Recent work in Cohn et al. (2019) shows that civic honesty and cooperative behaviour captured in a wallet-return experiment varies considerably across the world. Similarly, beliefs about social trust…

We demonstrate how successful entrepreneurship depends on a collaborative innovation bloc (CIB), a system of innovation that evolves spontaneously and within which activity takes place through time. A…

This paper presents a critical assessment of the public debate on income and wealth inequality in Sweden. We scrutinize ten often-heard claims in the debate by contrasting them against facts in availa…

For millennia, money has acted as a store of value as reducing transaction costs – crypto does neither

Coups and regime transitions are events that typically are intended to change the basic institutional framework of a country. Which specific institutions change and the consequences of these changes n…

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays. The papers are primarily empirical, and use a wide variety of data sources ranging from global survey data to administrative records. Essay I (with…

Motivated by the lack of sub-national empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and institutional development, this study explores the local effects of World Bank aid on perceived institution…

We study mechanism design under endogenously incomplete commitment as it arises in contracting with escape clauses. An escape clause permits the agent to end a contractual relationship under specified…

This essay argues that mainstream Left and Right parties’ convergence around the liberal moral foundations of care, fairness, and liberty most likely explains the popular discontent with establishment…

There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960–2017, we investigate how de facto a…

Intrapreneurs, entrepreneurial employees, constitute an important force behind innovations in the economy. Yet, what factors that promote intrapreneurship at the country level are an underdeveloped re…

Intervening on modifiable risk factors to prevent dementia is of key importance, since progress-modifying treatments are not currently available. Education is inversely associated with dementia risk,…

While the association between economic freedom and long‐term economic growth has been well documented, the parallel research literature on the distributional consequences of economic freedom is full o…

We document a significant increase in the sorting of workers by cognitive and noncognitive skills across Swedish firms during 1986–2008. During this period, worker skill differences between firms incr…

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…

For the past decade, the sharing economy has not only grown but also expanded to cover a wide variety of different activities across the globe. Despite a lot of research, there is still no agreement o…

Skepticism about the quality of health systems and their consequent underuse are thought to contribute to high rates of mortality in the developing world. The perceived quality of health services may…

Many electricity markets use capacity mechanisms to support generation owners. Capacity payments can mitigate imperfections associated with “missing money” in the spot market and solve transitory capa…

We study partner preferences for education and attractiveness by conducting a field experiment in a large online dating market. Fictitious profiles with manipulated levels of education and photo attra…

This paper evaluates the impact of entry regulations on stores’ incentives to adjust product variety and long-run performance. We use rich Swedish data on stores, product categories, and local regulat…

This chapter describes economic insights from research having studied the ongoing information and communications technology (ICT)-based structural transformation of the business sector. It also descri…

This chapter analyses in what way digitalisation changes the conditions for taxation. In the 2020s, firms create value less using machines and more using intangibles, such as copyrights, R&D and s…

We employ geocoded data to explore the effects of ethnic enclaves in Swedish cities on the propensity of Middle Eastern immigrants to transcend from having no employment to self-employment. We demonst…

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…

This introductory chapter sheds light on the opportunities and challenges that the digital era has in store for the European Union (EU) at a time when its fundamental values are being called into ques…

In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, the European Union must regain lost ground and create more favorable conditions for inclusive and sustainable economic growth. The best way to achieve this goal is…

Using the World Management Survey method, the authors mapped and analysed management quality in Swedish primary care centres. On average, private sector providers were better managed than public provi…

Incomplete capital markets and credit constraints for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are often considered obstacles to economic growth, thus motivating government interventions in capital m…

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…

We use micro data on affiliates to Swedish multinational firms (MNEs) to explore the impact of more stringent employment protection legislation (EPL) on foreign direct investment (FDI). We add to the…

We examine how variation in antisemitism across countries can be explained by economic freedom. We propose two mechanisms. First, the more economic freedom, the greater the scope of market activities.…

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…

Sweden faces a major challenge in the next decades because of a projected increase in electricity demand, aging supply infrastructure and the transition to an energy system with a substantial share of…

In this chapter, we offer an exploatory empirical analysis that captures the general location and colocation patterns for restaurants using Swedish geo-coded data for the year 2015, which allows us to…

With this book, we aim at contributing to the existing efforts to bridge these two extensively realated strands of literature where we compiled several individual contributions that present how touris…

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…

This book approaches the tourism and hospitality industry from a regional science perspective. By analyzing the spatial context of tourist travels, the hospitality sector, and the regional impacts of…

Economic growth in Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor) has displayed dramatic volatility since the country´s independence in 2002. The first few years were characterized by negative or extremely low gro…

We construct an oligopolistic model with heterogeneous firms where new automation technologies displace workers. We show that both leading and laggard firms increase their productivity when automating…

This book explores the multiple challenges that the global technology shift is posing to the EU. It raises the question of how European societies will mobilize the positive effects of the rapid techno…

Entrepreneurship plays a pivotal role for institutional change and economic development in transition and developing economies. Formal and informal institutions in such countries are often sub-par, bu…

Focusing on health care, education, and elderly care, Privatizing Welfare Services draws on extensive research on the consequences of introducing market-based mechanisms to deliver welfare services.

In this paper, we argue that altered incentives for clubs to develop star players after the Bosman ruling can explain why European football has seen lower competitive balance in the Champions League b…

Policymakers in several countries have recently taken steps to promote the rapid export expansion of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The goal of these policies has been to create successfu…

This article presents the results of a field experiment in which fictitious parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) sent inquiries…

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-superlati…

Relying on Swedish linked employer-employee data over a 30-year period, I study the importance of work during high school for graduates’ school-to-work transition and labor market outcomes. I show tha…

For the past decade, the sharing economy has not only grown but also expanded to cover a wide variety of different activities across the globe. Despite a lot of research, there is still no agreement o…

This paper studies the behavior of competing firms in a duopoly with rational inattentive consumers. Firms play a sequential game in which they decide to obfuscate their individual prices before compe…

Religion exerts a powerful influence on many people’s lives. We investigate how self-assessed religiosity affects self-assessed health in Europe. Our sample consists of individuals with a native fathe…

We exploit the randomized assignment of lottery prizes in a large administrative Swedish data set to estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation. A $150,000 windfall gain increa…

We show that the anticipation of COVID-19 vaccines reduces voluntary social distancing. In a large-scale preregistered survey experiment with a representative sample, we study whether providing inform…

We study the economic and psychological effects of a USD 1076 PPP unconditional cash transfer, a five-week psychotherapy program, and the combination of both interventions among 5,756 individuals in r…

In the Middle Ages, tens of thousands types of uni-faced bracteate coins were struck in the period 1140−1520. The existence of hundreds of small independent currency areas with their own mints in cent…

The financial system channels resources from savers to investors. It helps firms to fund new investments and households to smooth consumption over time. It allows entrepreneurs to offload risk on outs…

The decision to outsource public provision of services is multifaceted and context dependent. Doing so tends to lower labor intensity and increase its efficiency. Costs are usually lower, but quality…

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…

Does medicine run in families? Polyakova and colleagues have explored data from Swedish educational records, to see whether physicians had relatives that also trained as medical professionals. They al…

It is well known that capital constraints can hinder individuals to set up a business. Many business owners rely on own capital or capital from friends, fools and family in order to acquire required c…

Thirty years ago, the Swedish tax system underwent a major reform. Since then there have been many changes to the tax system, and the general level of tax revenues has declined by over five percentage…

Several studies have linked rising insolvency rates to increasing inequality and argued that this might be explained by individuals’ desire to “Keep up with the Joneses”. Using unique administrative r…

This study investigates the role of retail pharmacy ownership in the opioid epidemic in the United States by comparing independently owned pharmacies’ and chain pharmacies’ prescription opioid dispens…

This paper evaluates an ambitious and newly designed program for increased integration in Sweden. The purpose of the program is to help newly arrived, low-educated refugees into employment. The progra…

Just as its constitutional development is characterised by frequent change and substantial concentration of power, the Latin American and the Caribbean area is known to host some of the most corrupt c…

In China, between 2006 and 2013, local public debt crowded out the investment of private firms by tightening their funding constraints while leaving state-owned firms’ investment unaffected. We establis…

We measure and analyze discriminatory behavior against same-sex couples trying to rent an apartment in Portugal and pay special attention to the role of religiosity. This is the first correspondence f…

This paper employs Swedish data on households' stock holdings to investigate how consumption responds to changes in stock market returns. We instrument the actual capital gains and dividend payments w…

This paper provides a comprehensive study on how attending a Swedish independent upper secondary school, instead of a public school, affects students’ academic and short-term post-secondary outcomes.…

Motivated by agency theory and arguments from linguistic studies, we argue in this paper the internationalization of a firm’s audit committee to be associated with weaker firm-level corporate governan…

We estimate trends in global earnings dispersion across occupational groups by constructing a new database that covers 68 developed and developing countries between 1970 and 2018. Our main finding is…

This paper presents the results of a study that examined customer discrimination against fictitious male and female food truck owners with Arabic-sounding names on a Swedish university campus. In a we…

In this paper, we use a randomized field experiment in Sweden to investigate how self-employment experience is valued in the labor market. We find that self-employment experience negatively impacts th…