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The literature on metrics to measure contributions to climate change from emissions of different greenhouse gases divides into studies that highlight physical aspects and studies that show the importance of economic factors. This paper distinguishes the physical aspects and implications of economic factors by asking what is demanded from physically based metrics if used for a specific policy objective. We study the aim of maximizing the welfare of emissions generated by consumption when there is a limit to the increase in global mean temperature. In that case, metrics ought to change over time, with increasing weight on short-living gases before the temperature limit is met. Metrics for short-living gases increase also with increasing uncertainty. Adjustments to new information spur higher metrics for short-living gases if it reduces the expected allowable emissions before the target is met, and lower metrics in the opposite case. Under a binding target, metrics refer to the instantaneous impact on radiative forcing multiplied by the lifetime of the respective gases, and adjusted by the attitude to risk.

Essay I: Same-gender teachers may affect educational preferences by acting as role models for their students. I study the importance of the gender composition of teachers in math and science during lower secondary school on the likelihood to continue in math-intensive tracks in the next levels of education. I use population wide register data from Sweden and control for family fixed effects to account for sorting into schools. According to my results, the gender gap in graduating with a math-intensive track in upper secondary school would decrease by 16 percent if the share of female math and science teachers would be changed from none to all at lower secondary school. The gap in math-related university degrees would decrease by 22 percent from the same treatment. The performance is not affected by the higher share of female science teachers, only the likelihood to choose science, suggesting that the effects arise because female teachers serve as role models for female students.

Is childcare a safety net for vulnerable children? This paper investigates the role of childcare for the health outcomes of children whose parents are unemployed. Exploiting time variation in childcare access resulting from a reform requiring Swedish municipalities to provide childcare also for children with unemployed parents, we estimate causal effects on health, as measured by register data on hospitalizations. We find that access to childcare reduced hospitalizations for infections among toddlers, especially among boys. Among children in preschool age access to childcare caused a temporary increase in hospitalization for infections the year they got access to childcare.

We analyze how access to childcare affects health outcomes of children with unemployed parents using a reform that increased childcare access in some Swedish municipalities. For 4–5 year olds, we find an immediate increase in infection-related hospitalization, when these children first get access to childcare. We find no effect on younger children. When children are 10–11 years of age, children who did not have access to childcare when parents were unemployed are more likely to take medication for respiratory conditions. Taken together, our results thus suggest that access to childcare exposes children to risks for infections, but that need for medication in school age is lower for children who had access.

The paper studies the relation between valuation and corporate investment level. It provides an insight to the q-model and its implications for investment level. By acknowledge the q-model’s empirical shortcomings it questions whether adjustments for volatility will strengthen the q-model empirically. It argues: as volatility is a proxy for risk, stock market volatility would be related to firm behaviour and investment decisions.

Malaria is one of the leading causes of child mortality in the world today. Almost half a million children die from the disease every year (OWID 2022). Uganda is currently one of few countries globally where more than 90 % of the population are at risk of malaria (Target Malaria 2023). Decades of academic research has shown that maternal education plays an important role in the reduction of malaria in children. Hence, this thesis seeks to further explore this relationship in Uganda by first examining how maternal education impacts children’s bed net use and if the effect depends on the level of wealth. Secondly, the aim is to also analyze if maternal education increases malaria knowledge. The methods used for this were the multiple regression model and the linear probability model. The results showed that when mothers went from having no education to at least some secondary education, children’s bed net use increased with 14.8% on average. Although not statistically significant, the importance of maternal education was 2.64% higher on average for poor mothers when they went from no education to at least some primary education. Lastly, knowledge about malaria increased 0.98% on average when mothers went from no education to at least some primary education.

In developing countries, urbanization and demographic changes are increasing food waste generation at household levels. However, it remains unclear how behavioural and personal characteristics influence the behaviours of urban consumers in developing countries regarding food waste. In this study, we extended the integrative model of behavioural prediction to examine the determinants of food waste behaviour amongst a sample of 698 urban dwellers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The empirical results revealed that attitudes and perceived behavioural control were the most important predictors of intention toward food waste reduction. With regard to food waste behaviours, the results showed that the more an individual feels obliged to discard less food, the higher the odds that the quantity of food that gets wasted by the household would be reduced. Likewise, knowledge about the negative impacts of wasting food and an ability to interpret information on labels of food products were associated with decreased quantities of household food waste. In addition, lower psychological distance to food waste was generally associated with lower quantities of wasted food. Finally, sociodemographic characteristics and food-shopping routines were found to be significant predictors of food waste behaviours. Overall, these findings constitute an entry point for more research and policy measures in order to understand determinants of household food waste behaviours in developing countries and to design effective interventions to reinforce their behaviours towards more sustainable food consumption patterns.

I denna uppsats tittar vi på löneandelens och inkomstskillnadernas utveckling i Sverige sedan 1970-talet. Faktorer som förklarar ökade inkomstskillnader och minskad löneandel i Sverige ligger till grund för analysen. Fokus ligger även på de mätproblem som präglar löneandelen. Syftet med uppsatsen är att ge en översikt över den aktuella diskursen som råder kring inkomstskillnader och löneandelen i Sverige. Vi undersöker om det finns några samband mellan förklaringsfaktorerna till ökade inkomstskillnader och minskad löneandel i Sveriges utveckling och varför måtten är problematiska som forskningsämne. I vår slutsats finner vi det svårare att mäta löneandelen än inkomstfördelningen pga. definitionsproblem. Vi finner en koppling mellan den svenska inkomstfördelningen och löneandelen när det gäller ökade kapitalinkomster. Det går inte att säga hur mycket faktorerna påverkat löneandelen och inkomstfördelning eftersom det saknas tillförlitliga simuleringsmodeller.

Essay 1: If grandparents have an independent impact on their grandchildren's schooling, intergenerational correlations estimated using two generations will underestimate the true level of intergenerational persistence in education. Recent research has found such multi-generational effects, but there is still no consensus on whether these estimates are due to a direct impact of grandparents on their grandchildren, or if they arise because of measurement error or model misspecification. In this paper, I estimate the intergenerational transmission arising from direct interactions with grandparents by comparing families where the grandparent died before the birth of the grandchild with those where the grandparent lived to meet and spend time with the grandchild. I find that direct effects contribute most, if not all, of the transmission coefficient across three generations.

Essay 2: Sibling correlations in education and income have been extensively studied in the literature, and attempts to look inside the correlation have focused on family and neighborhood effects. In this paper I estimate sibling spillovers in education—that is, the effect of an older sibling's schooling on their younger sibling's schooling. To estimate causal effects, I use a compulsory school reform in Sweden in the 1950s to instrument for the older sibling's schooling. I am unable to detect statistically significant sibling spillovers, implying that any such spillovers must be relatively small.

Essay 3: (with Che-Yuan Liang) The implementation of a copyright protection reform in Sweden in April 2009 suddenly increased the risk of being caught and prosecuted for illegal file sharing. This paper uses the reform to investigate the effects of illegal file sharing on music and movie sales. We find that the reform decreased Internet traffic by 16 percent during the subsequent six months. It also increased music sales by 36 percent. Furthermore, it had no significant effects on movie sales. We conclude that pirated music is a strong substitute to legal music whereas the substitutability is less for movies.

Essay 4: (with Magnus Gustavsson) This paper shows that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest and lowest paid jobs compared to middle-wage jobs. The most popular explanation for such a pattern is the hypothesis of "task-biased technological change", where technological progress reduces the demand for routine middle-wage jobs but increases the demand for non-routine jobs located at the tails of the job-wage distribution. Our estimates, however, do not endorse this explanation for the 1970s and 1980s. Stronger evidence for task biased technological change, albeit not conclusive, is found for the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, there is both a statistically and economically significant growth of non-routine jobs and a decline of routine jobs. No link between wage changes and routine tasks, as would be expected from task-biased technological change, can however be established.

I denna uppsats genomförs en empirisk analys av den svenska skivmarknaden och den nedgång i skivförsäljningen som skett under senare år. Fokus ligger på att undersöka om nedgången orsakats av illegal fildelning, eller om andra faktorer kan ligga bakom. Analysen sker genom en genomgång av relevanta aggregerade data för skivförsäljning, videoförsäljning, internetanvändande m.m. En enkel ekonometrisk analys görs också, och sammantaget visar resultaten att den växande konkurrensen från DVD-film troligen är en viktig orsak till den minskade skivförsäljningen. Inga tydliga bevis för att fildelningen haft en signifikant påverkan hittas. Brist på detaljdata gör dock att alla slutsatser måste tolkas försiktigt.

Using a new identification strategy, we jointly estimate the growth in occupationalwage premia as well as time-varying occupation-specific life-cycle profiles for Swedishworkers 1996–2013. We document a substantial increase in between-occupation wageinequality due to differential growth in premia. The association of wage premiumgrowth and employment growth is positive, suggesting that premium growth ispredominantly driven by demand side factors. We also find that wage growth dueto occupation-specific skill acquisition was more dispersed in the early years of thesample period. Our results are robust to allowing for occupation-level changes inreturns to cognitive and psycho-social skills.

This paper shows that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest and lowest paid jobs compared to middle-wage jobs. The most popular explanation for such a pattern is the hypothesis of ‘task-biased technological change’, where technological progress reduces the demand for routine middle-wage jobs but increases the demand for non-routine jobs located at the tails of the job-wage distribution. Our estimates, however, do not support this explanation for the 1970s and 1980s. Stronger evidence for task biased technological change, albeit not conclusive, is found for the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, there is both a statistically and economically significant growth of non-routine jobs and a decline of routine jobs. Results for wages are, however, mixed; while task-biased technological change cannot explain changes in between-occupation wage differentials, it does have considerable explanatory power for changes in within-occupation wage differentials.

This paper investigates the connection between the Swedish wage profile of net job creation and Autor, Levy, and Murnane’s (2003) proposed substitutability between routine tasks and technology. We first show that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest and lowest paid jobs compared to middle-wage jobs. We then use cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of job-specific employment to map out the importance of routine versus nonroutine tasks for these changes. Results are consistent with substitutability between routine tasks and technology as an important explanation for the observed job polarization during the 1990s and 2000s, but not during the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, the overrepresentation of routine tasks in middle-wage jobs can potentially explain 44 percent of the growth of low-wage jobs relative to middle-wage jobs after 1990 but largely lacks explanatory power in earlier years.

How useful is work experience from the gig economy for labor market entrants searching for traditional wage jobs? We conducted a correspondence study in Sweden, comparing callback rates for recent high school graduates with (i) gig-experience, (ii) traditional experience, and (iii) unemployment history. We also study heterogeneous responses with respect to perceived foreign background. Our findings suggest that gig-experience is more valuable than unemployment, but less useful than traditional experience for majority applicants. Strikingly however, no form of labor market experience increases the callback rate for minority workers.

The implementation of a copyright protection reform in Sweden in April 2009 suddenly increased the risk of being caught and punished for illegal file sharing. This paper investigates the impact of the reform on illegal file sharing and music sales using a difference-in-differences approach with Norway and Finland as control groups. We find that the reform decreased Internet traffic by 16% and increased music sales by 36% during the first six months. Pirated music therefore seems to be a strong substitute to legal music. However, the reform effects disappeared almost completely after six months, likely because of the weak enforcement of the law.

This paper investigates the effects of illegal file sharing (piracy) on music and movie sales. The Swedish implementation of the European Union directive IPRED on April 1, 2009 suddenly increased the risk of being caught and prosecuted for file sharing. We investigate the subsequent drop in piracy as approximated by the drop in Swedish Internet traffic and the effects on music and movie sales in Sweden. We find that the reform decreased Internet traffic by 18 percent during the subsequent six months. It also increased sales of physical music by 27 percent and digital music by 48 percent. Furthermore, it had no significant effects on the sales of theater tickets or DVD movies. The results indicate that pirated music is a strong substitute for legal music whereas the substitutability is less for movies.

We estimate long-run intergenerational persistence in human capital using information on outcomes for the extended family: the dynasty. A dataset including the entire Swedish population, linking four generations, allows us to identify parents' siblings and cousins, their spouses, and spouses' siblings. Using various human capital measures, we show that traditional parent-child estimates underestimate long-run intergenerational persistence by at least one-third. By adding outcomes for more distant ancestors, we show that almost all of the persistence is captured by the parental generation. Data on adoptees show that at least one-third of -long-term persistence is attributed to environmental factors.

This study estimates intergenerational wealth correlations across up to four generations and examines the degree to which the wealth association between parents and children can be explained by inheritances. Using a Swedish data set with newly hand-collected data on wealth and bequests, we find parent-child rank correlations of 0.3-0.4 and grandparent-grandchild rank correlations of 0.1-0.2. Bequests and gifts appear to be central in this process, accounting for at least half of the parent-child wealth correlation while earnings and education can account for only a quarter.

This thesis studies abnormal returns of credit rating changes. The purpose is to examine whether downgrades and upgrades lead to abnormal stock market returns. German data is used from the time period 1998-2018. This thesis examines ratings from all large credit rating agencies. These are Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. There is a total of 362 company rating changes during this period. After sorting the data, the remaining changes to be studied are 143 downgrades and 93 upgrades. An event study approach is used to examine changes during the whole period, combined with a comparison before and after the financial crisis in 2008. The comparison is interesting due to the criticism towards credit rating agencies before and during the crisis. Downgrades do not show any significant abnormal returns. Upgrades show positive (negative) abnormal return 15 days before (after) the announcement. One potential explanation is that upgrades might already be anticipated by the market participants and subsequently followed with an effect of overreaction. There is no significant change close to the event date. The comparison between before and after the crisis does lack significance to prove differences.

The gambling regulation in Sweden is a controversial topic. The thesis compares the Swedish gambling regulation with current regulation in Britain and Denmark. Cost-benefit analysis is used to analyze the various differences between the regulations. Primarily information is used from surveys, interviews and legal texts to explain the existing problems related to the gambling market. This thesis compares the conditions in the different countries and differences in various gambling types. The thesis also sets out the conditions for the private companies and differences in socio-economic benefits. The conclusion is that the present regulation is not as economically efficient as the comparison countries’ gambling regulations.

Den här uppsatsen undersöker jobbskatteavdragets effekt på pendlingen från Sverige till Danmark. Detta görs genom att mäta nettopendlingen året innan samt efter reformens införande år 2007. Nettopendlingen för en kommun ges av skillnaden mellan antalet som pendlar ut från kommunen och antalet som pendlar till en kommunen. Vi är endast intresserade av pendling mellan länderna så vi tittar därmed inte på inrikes pendling. Efter detta steg så summerar vi nettopendlingen för kommunens alla pendlingsvägar till det motsatta landet till ett enda tal som då mäter nettopendlingen från en kommun till det andra landet. Uppsatsens hypotes är att nettopendlingen från Sverige till Danmark år 2007 skulle minska, relativt från Sverige till Danmark år 2006. Uppsatsens frågeställning är; Minskar införandet av det svenska jobbskatteavdraget år 2007 nettopendlingen från Sverige till Danmark? Jobbskatteavdraget är en skattereduktion som enligt teorin ska öka arbetsutbudet genom att minska reservationslönen. Nettopendling från Sverige till Danmark ska enligt teorin minska, och nettopendlingen Danmark till Sverige istället öka, om reservationslönen i Sverige går ned. Om vi observerar en minskning i nettopendlingen från Sverige till Danmark så indikerar det således även att en minskning i reservationslönen skett i Sverige. Detta indikerar möjligtvis en ökning i arbetsutbudet, allt annat lika. Resultatet gick emot hypotesen och visade istället en ökning i nettopendling för Sverige år 2007. Uppsatsens placeboestimat blev dock signifikant så vi kan inte urskilja om uppsatsens empiriska modell verkligen fångat upp effekten av jobbskatteavdraget eller inte.

In this study an error correction model is estimated using monthly panel data from Stockholm covering the time period January 2005 to December 2012. In the long-run equation the fundamental variables real disposable income, real mortgage rate, real construction costs and population growth are shown to be significant. The exploration of the short-run dynamics reveals a significant error correction term suggesting a movement towards long-run equilibrium of 11.2 percent per month. The fitted values from the long-run equation are plotted against the actual real prices suggesting a slight inflation in prices in late 2012. Autocorrelation is present in the model, indicating a backward-looking pattern in real housing prices. These findings are consistent with speculative behavior but the price fluctuations are in large parts explained by the fundamental variables and as the cause of price discrepancies is unknown, an irrational price bubble cannot be concluded to exist.

Falska nyheter har blivit ett omdiskuterat fenomen i samband med politiska val de senaste åren. En motreaktion har varit faktagranskningar som ska förhindra att felaktiga uppgifter får fäste. Vi redogör för ett experiment om hur attityden till invandringens kostnader påverkades av en felaktig uppgift samtidigt som korrekt information gavs. De som fick ta del av uppgiften om mycket överdrivna kostnader var betydligt mer benägna att anse att för mycket resurser läggs på invandring jämfört med en kontrollgrupp som enbart fick ta del av korrekt infor-mation. Resultatet tyder på att faktagranskningar har begränsad möjlighet att lösa problemet med falska nyheter

I denna studie undersöktes sambandet mellan lyckonivån och migrationsbakgrund på individnivå. De migrationsgrupper som inkluderas är icke-migranter, första och andra generationen européer och första och andra generationen icke-européer. Datan kommer ifrån 8 omgångar från European Social Survey mellan 2002 till 2016 och har tolkats med hjälp av en OLS-estimering där fixa effekter samt diverse kontrollvariabler inkluderades. Vi undersökte effekten av migrantbakgrund på lyckonivån samt livstillfredställelsen. Vi tittade även på huruvida religion, utbildning och inkomst har olika effekter på lyckonivån och livstillfredställelsen för de olika grupperna. Icke-migranter är lyckligare än både första och andra generationens migranter medan andra generationen är lyckligare än första generationen vilket indikerar att tid i landet möjligtvis har en effekt på lycka. Européer är även lyckligare än icke-européer. Vi finner små skillnader vid beräkningen av effekten av inkomst, utbildning och religion på migrantgruppers lycka och tillfredsställelse. Resultatets interna och externa validitet hade ökat om man hade kunnat skilja ekonomiska migranter och flyktingar.

The common view that far-reaching labour market deregulation is the only remedy for high European unemployment is too simplistic. First, the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are an important cause of wage rigidity, going beyond the legal constraints emphasized in the political debate. Second, in a second-best setting, a compressed wage structure may generate an efficiency gain. Finally, based on simple plots of the relation between labour market institutions and openness in OECD countries, I conclude that the globalization of economic activity may lead to increased demand for various labour market rigidities.

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent sharing and vested interests. In support of this more benign complementary hypothesis the paper presents a range of historical, theoretical, and cross-country regression evidence. The social insurance perspective changes substantially the assessment of often-proposed reforms of European labour market institutions. The benefits from eliminating labour market rigidities have to be set against the costs of reduced coverage of human capital related risk. The paper also argues that it is unclear whether the forces of globalisation, and the new economy, will really force countries to make their labour markets more flexible. While these phenomena may increase the efficiency costs of existing institutions, they may also make people more willing to pay a high premium to preserve institutions that provide insurance.

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise

We review the theoretical and empirical evidence on the relation between growth and the public sector against the background of the current debate on the issue. The evidence is found to admit no conclusion on whether the relation is positive, negative or non-existent. A simple cross-country regression in an OECD sample illustrates how the relation is easily tilted from negative to positive by introducing control variables for initial GDP and the dependent population.

Fölster and Henrekson (1998) claim that they, by addressing a number of econometric problems, can establish that it is likely that economies with a large public sector grow more slowly than economies with a small public sector. But their regressions are fundamentally flawed. Re-estimating their growth equation using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the growth effect of the public sector is statistically insignificant, and much smaller than the point-estimates reported by Fölster and Henrekson. This is consistent with the agnostic conclusion, drawn by us and many others, that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to give a reliable answer to whether a large public sector is growth promoting or retarding.

Fölster and Henrekson [Fölster, S., Henrekson, M., 1999. Growth and the public sector: A critique of the critics. European Journal of Political Economy 15, 337–358] claim that, by addressing a number of econometric problems, they can establish that it is likely that economies with a large public sector grow more slowly than economies with a small public sector. But their regressions are fundamentally flawed. Re-estimating their growth equation using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the growth effect of the public sector is statistically insignificant, and much smaller than the point-estimates that they report. This is consistent with the agnostic conclusion, drawn by us and others, that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to provide a reliable answer as to whether a large public sector is growth promoting or retarding.

I den populära svenska debatten hävdas ofta att det finns ett starkt negativt samband mellan offentlig sektor och ekonomisk tillväxt. Den empiriska litteraturen ger emellertid inte något belägg for ett entydigt kausalt samband från stor offentlig sektor till låg tillväxt. Jonas Agell, Thomas Lindh och Henry Ohlsson går i denna artikel igenom den aktuella teoretiska och empiriska forskningen på området. Med några enkla jämförelser för OECD-länderna visar de att andra faktorer än offentlig sektor kan tänkas ha större betydelse för tillväxtskillnader mellan länder.

This study reports the results from a repeat survey among managers in Swedish manufacturing, designed to explore how a severe and prolonged macroeconomic shock affects wage rigidity and unemployment. Our second survey was conducted in 1998, when the unemployment rate was much higher, and the inflation rate much lower, than when we conducted the first survey in 1991. We find no evidence that the increase in unemployment has softened the mechanisms generating wage rigidity. On the contrary, we conclude that – because of severe downward nominal wage rigidity – real wages have become more rigid during Sweden’s move to a low-inflation environment. We also report a range of new evidence on underbidding, efficiency wage mechanisms, job security legislation, workers’ wage norms, and to what extent the long-term unemployed are subject to statistical discrimination.

In a recent article Stefan Fölster and Magnus Henrekson [2001] argue that “…the more the econometric problems that are addressed, the more robust the relationship between government size and economic growth appears”. But in failing to control for simultan

Fölster and Henrekson (European Economic Review 45 (2001), 1501–1520) argue that “...the more the econometric problems that are addressed, the more robust the relationship between government size and economic growth appears”. But in failing to control for simultaneity and in ignoring issues of sample-selection bias, the regressions reported by Fölster/Henrekson are flawed. Using theoretically valid instruments, we find that the estimated partial correlation between size of the public sector and economic growth is statistically insignificant and highly unstable across specifications. Moreover, since instruments are weak, all hypothesis tests are unreliable. We conclude that cross-country growth regressions are unlikely to come up with a reliable answer to the question of the growth effects of government spending and taxation.

In this paper, we analyze government budget balance within a simple model of endogenous growth. For the AK model, simple analytical conditions for a tax cut to be self-financing can be derived. The critical variable is not the tax rate per se, but the "tr

In this paper, we analyze government budget balance within a simple model of endogenous growth. For the AK model, simple analytical conditions for a tax cut to be self-financing can be derived. The critical variable is not the tax rate per se, but the ”transfer-adjusted tax rate”. We discuss some conceptual issues in dynamic revenue analysis, and we explain why previous studies have arrived at seemingly contradictory results. Finally, we perform an empirical study of the transfer-adjusted tax rates of the OECD countries to see which country has the highest potential for fiscal improvements; it turns out that only a few countries have any potential for such ”dynamic scoring”.

We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the basic labor supply model. We show that tax arbitrage has dramatic implications for positive, normative and econometric analysis of how taxes affect work incentives.

We examine how tax avoidance in the form of trade in well-functioning asset markets affects the empirical study of labor supply. We discuss the implications for tax policy analysis, and we show that a failure to account for avoidance responses may lead to huge errors when predicting how tax reform affects labor supply tax revenue, and the welfare cost of taxation. In conclusion we argue that our model may explain a number of otherwise hard to understand dimensions of tax payer response.