Publications

Do pork barrel politics really change voting behavior? IFN researchers measured the effect of high-profile pledges on child care in Swedish elections – with surprising results, writes Henrik Jordahl.

Entrepreneurship is considered of course to be important. And there’s a common perception that countries that are not good at entrepreneurship have low growth.

Countries do not become rich through innovation; you don’t even become rich by having the best researchers. You become a wealthy country by applying your research in highly efficient companies, compan…

In this chapter, we provide an overview of research on neighborhoods and social networks and their role in shaping behavior and economic outcomes. We include a discussion of empirical and theoretical…

We provide an overview on networks in economics. We first look at the theoretical aspects of network economics using a game-theoretical approach. We derive some results on games on networks and network…

This chapter 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 cri…

In recent years, the term “transparency” has emerged as one of the most popular and keenly-touted concepts around. In the economic-political debate, the principle of transparency is often advocated as…

Entrepreneurs perform a central function in today’s decentralized market economies by innovating and exploring new ways to organize factors of production. They are consequently widely believed to play…

We provide an overview and synthesis of the literatures analyzing games in which players are connected via a network structure. We discuss, in particular, the impact of the structure of the network on…

When the Treaty of Maastricht took effect on 1 November 1993, it established a Common Foreign and Security Policy for the European Union (EU). The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War…

Focusing on North–South trade relations, this chapter explores non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries, where the preference-receiving developing countries are not expected to make m…

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:…

The authors study the evolution of Swedish wealth taxation, since its introduction in 1911 until it was abolished in 2007. The rules concerning the valuation of assets, deductions/exemptions, and tax…

This chapter describes the evolution of capital income taxation in Sweden between 1862 and 2013, including corporate, dividends, capital gains, interest income, and wealth taxation. To illustrate this…

This chapter presents annual Swedish time series data on the top marginal tax wedge and marginal tax wedges on labor income for low-, average-, and high-income earners for the period 1862–2013. The ta…

This chapter studies the evolution of Swedish inheritance taxation from its inception in 1885 to its abolishment in 2004. The basic principles of the tax, including underlying ideas and ambitions, tax…

This chapter gives an introduction to the development of taxation in Sweden from 1862 to 2013, which is examined right through the volume. The contributions in this volume cover six key aspects of the…

This study analyses different forms of discrimination towards individuals in the labor market. In particular, it examines the potential for discrimination of sexual orientation, religion, and physical…

This chapter presents annual Swedish time series data regarding consumption taxes; that is, the indirect taxation of goods and services, for the 1862–2013 period. As a share of total state tax revenue…

This chapter examines the development and role of 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 in…

For several decades, Sweden has had a relatively high voter turnout, both in relation to the first half of the 20th century and in comparison with other countries. Still, even in this high-turnout con…

The private equity industry has grown immensely during the last three decades. It is a global phenomenon, making private equity firms important owners of corporate assets. So far, the industry has sho…

Retail is concentrated in areas where demand is high. A measure of market potential can be used to calculate place-specific demand for retail services. The effect of distance on market potential depen…

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…

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…

In this dissertation, Ewa presents four essays, all discussing the topic of electricity markets. It does not provide a full picture but is rather a selection of topics revolving around the issues that…

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…

Tolerant societies seem to function better than nontolerant societies both economically and socially. This makes it worthwhile to identify ways to stimulate tolerance. While previous research indicate…

You might think that there is nothing left to be said about this year’s liberal darling liber, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but Piketty’s opus has just been named the Financial Times’ Business…

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…

This article explores whether trade facilitation – i.e. improved and simplified trade procedures – could be an important part of the reform agenda of the Barcelona Process. Adopting a Southern perspec…

This paper focuses on the ability of the labor market to efficiently match heterogeneous workers to jobs within a given industry and the role that globalization plays in that process. Using matched wor…

In industries with network effects, incumbents' installed bases create barriers to entry that discourage entrepreneurs from developing new innovations. Yet, entry is not the only commercialization rou…

This paper examines the development of taxation in Sweden from 1862 to 2010. The examination includes six key aspects of the Swedish tax system, namely the taxation of labor income, capital income, we…

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 consider a model where the criminal decision of each individual is affected by not only her own characteristics, but also by the characteristics of her friends (contextual effects). We determine wh…

We study the effect of taxation on entrepreneurship, investigating how taxes affect both the number of start-ups and their average quality. We show theoretically that even with risk neutral agents and…

Using data from 114 countries (1983–2007), we examine the relationship between globalization and World Bank absolute poverty estimates. We find a significant negative correlation between globalization a…

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

In proportional representation (PR) systems, political power is typically shared across several political parties. Many parties are small and focused on specific policies, such as environmental policy…

This essay uses Edmund Phelps’ new book Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Phelps 2013) as inspiration to discuss innovation and entrepreneurship. The boo…

This paper estimates the intergenerational transmission of trust by studying children of immigrants in 29 European countries with ancestry in 87 nations. There is significant transmission of trust on…

Capitalism can create prosperity only if there is a clear separation between the market and the political sphere, argues Andreas Bergh in his new book Sweden and the Revival of the Capitalist Welfare…

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…

This paper discusses a number of questions with regard to Sweden’s economic and political development: † How did Sweden become rich? † What explains Sweden’s high level of income equality? † What were…

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…

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 delive…

The cross-country correlation between social trust and income equality is well documented, but few studies examine the direction of causality. We show theoretically that by facilitating cooperation, t…

We develop a dynamic network formation model that can explain the observed nestedness in real-world networks. Links are formed on the basis of agents' centrality and have an exponentially distributed…

What explains the world-wide trend of pro-entrepreneurial policies? We study entrepreneurial policy in the form of entry costs in a lobbying model taking into account the conflict of interest between e…

En OpEd av Andreas Bergh publiceras i den brittiska finanstidningen CityAM. Till skillnad från den franske ekonomen Thomas Piketty visar Bergh att Sveriges framgångsrecept inte omfattar hög beskattnin…

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 develops an improved test of economic convergence or divergence using time series methods by introducing nonlinear trends in the form of logarithmic trend functions into the vector error co…

Tino Sanandaji, IFN, skriver om skola och utbildning i den amerikanska tidskriften National Review Online. "Privata svenska skolor tillåts inte fullt ut att med sina pedagogiska metoder förnya där det…

In the early 1990s, Sweden introduced one of the most ambitious school-voucher systems in the world. The state still pays for education, but it gives parents the choice to take their voucher to any pu…

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…

Using data on institutional quality and the KOF Globalization Index, we examine over 100 countries from 1992 to 2010 to analyse the relationship between economic and social globalization and six measu…

We show theoretically that the poor can benefit from price changes induced by higher income inequality. As the number of poor increases, the market for products aimed toward the poor grows, and such p…

We study the impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on short- and medium-term economic performancein Sweden. The pandemic was one of the severest and deadliest pandemics in human history, but it hashit…

We develop a unified model embedding different behavioral mechanisms of social interac-tions and design a statistical model selection test to differentiate between them in empiricalapplications. This…

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…

Real-world financial contracts vary greatly in the combinations of cash flow contingency terms and control rights used. Extant theoretical work explains such variation by arguing that each investor fi…

Central banks have become 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 u…

We use the Economic Freedom Index to characterize the institutions of the Athenian city-state in the fourth century BCE. It has been shown that ancient Greece witnessed improved living conditions for…

Revealed preference tests are frequently used to check data on the behavior of agents for consistency with economic theory. Unfortunately these tests lack a stochastic element and thus one violation o…

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…

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 simp…

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…

We introduce a criterion for robustness to strategic uncertainty in games with continuum strategy sets. We model a player’s uncertainty about another player’s strategy as an atomless probability distr…

Stimulating entrepreneurship is high on the policy agenda of many countries. We study the effects of tax policies on entrepreneurs' choice of riskiness (or quality) of an innovation project, and on th…

Abstract We study the evolution of modern Swedish wealth taxation from its introduction in**1911 until it was abolished in 2007. The rules concerning valuation of assets, deductions/exemptions and tax…

During the last decades, we have witnessed a large number of entrepreneurial firms that reach the world market at a fast pace (‘born global firms’). Our analysis suggests that the ongoing globalisatio…

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.…

One of the most cited studies within the field of binary choice models is that of Klein and Spady (1993), in which the authors propose a semiparametric estimator for use when the distribution of the er…

When commenting on the European radical right, the term ‘single-issue party’ is frequently bandied about. We survey the various conceptualizations of the term and then apply them to the Sweden Democra…