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Working papers

I study how transitory increases in the opportunity cost of schooling affect dropout rates and long-run outcomes. Exploiting a tax-free year in Iceland and comparing teenagers around compulsory schooling age, I find increased school dropout and a permanent loss in educational attainment for men, but not women. Consequently, men suffer substantial losses in lifetime earnings, slow career progression, and reduced marriage and fertility outcomes. Dropouts predominantly come from low-education neighborhoods and enter jobs with limited career prospects, consistent with misperceptions about the returns to education. I discuss the implications for the cost of business cycles, education policy, and age-dependent taxation.

with Arash Nekoei and Dominik Wehr

Manuscript | Summary | VoxEU column | VoxEU podcast

Coverage: Stockholm University - English, Swedish

We study the economic consequences of stress-related occupational illnesses (burnout) using Swedish administrative data. Using a mover design, we find that high-burnout firms and stressful occupations universally raise burnout risk yet disproportionately impact low-stress-tolerance workers. Workers who burn out endure permanent earnings losses regardless of gender – while women are three times more susceptible. Repercussions of burnout extend to the worker's family, reducing spousal income and children's educational achievements. Through sick leaves, earnings scars, and spillovers, burnout reduced the national labor income by 2.3% in 2019. We demonstrate how estimated costs, combined with a prediction model incorporating workers' self-reported stress, can improve the design of prevention programs.

with Mattias Almgren and John Kramer

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Children have a strong tendency to choose the same occupations as their parents, across all professions, earnings, and skill levels. We study the implications for intergenerational mobility and economic efficiency. Using individual-level data on the skills and personality traits of Swedish men, we estimate a general equilibrium Roy model incorporating unequal access to occupations depending on parental background. In a counterfactual economy with equal access, occupational following drops by half and earnings mobility increases by a third. Sons from low-income families gain the most, highlighting the misallocation of talent. Aggregate earnings gains are small in general equilibrium. Using an identification strategy that exploits long-run employment changes in fathers’ occupations, we estimate that occupational decline reduces sons’ tendency to follow, improves skill-match, and increases earnings, consistent with our structural-model estimates. Our results suggest that creating equal opportunities by removing occupational entry and exit barriers would increase intergenerational mobility without reducing output.

We study the impact of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on firm performance and worker labor market outcomes in Sweden. Comparing firms that undergo M&As with those that eventually do so, we find that both joint profits and employment drop substantially following a merger. However, this masks substantial heterogeneity: Profits of firms that share a common board member with the target firm continue to grow as expected, and only firms without a common board member experience reduced profit. This is especially true for vertical M&As between firms in different industries. This heterogeneity reflects differences in the effect of mergers on salaries, where firms that share a common board member with the target firm cut salaries following mergers, while others do not. We provide evidence that firms that execute successful M&As strategically send board members to potential targets in the years leading up to the M&A. This suggests that information acquisition can play a crucial role in successfully executing an M&A.

Publications

Conditionally accepted at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Manuscript | Paper Only | Online Appendix

Awarded the 2020 Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize

Media coverage:  The Economist

Labor income earned in Iceland in 1987 went untaxed. I use this episode to study labor supply responses to temporary wage changes. Using a population-wide dataset of earnings and working time and two identification strategies, I estimate intensive and extensive margin Frisch elasticities of 0.4 and 0.09, respectively. Workers with the ability to adjust drive these average responses: extensive margin by young and close-to-retirement cohorts and intensive margin responses by workers in temporally flexible jobs, though secondary jobs contribute to one-tenth of the response. The results suggest that adjustment frictions may similarly explain differences in elasticities within and across countries.

LABOUR, 2024. Vol. 38, Issue 2, p. 278-293

Publisher's version | ManuscriptPaper OnlyOnline Appendix

An emerging consensus is that the Frisch elasticity of labor supply is small. This may reflect a lack of salience, inelastic preferences, or prevalence of frictions. Studying survey data collected during a tax holiday in Norway, when earnings were untaxed during a transition between tax systems, I report three findings. First, 80 percent of adults were aware of the tax holiday. Second, one-fifth of adults responded by working more. Third, frictions in adjusting working hours or non-working time appear to be the reason for a majority of non-responses. The findings support the long-held notion that labor supply choices are constrained.

We exploit a volcanic “experiment” to study the costs and benefits of geographic mobility. In our experiment, a third of the houses in a town were covered by lava. People living in these houses were much more likely to move away permanently. For the dependents in a household (children), our estimates suggest that being induced to move by the “lava shock” dramatically raised lifetime earnings and education. While large, these estimates come with a substantial amount of statistical uncertainty. The benefits of moving were very unequally distributed across generations: the household heads (parents) were made slightly worse off by the shock. These results suggest large barriers to moving for the children, which imply that labor does not flow to locations where it earns the highest returns. The large gains from moving for the young are surprising in light of the fact that the town affected by our volcanic experiment was (and is) a relatively high income town. We interpret our findings as evidence of the importance of comparative advantage: the gains to moving may be very large for those badly matched to the location they happened to be born in, even if differences in average income are small.

Economic Journal2021, Vol. 131, Issue 636, p. 1742-1771

with Martin FlodénMatilda Kilström, and Roine Vestman 

Publisher's version | ManuscriptSlides | Online Appendix  | Replication package     

We examine the effect of monetary policy on household spending when households are indebted and interest rates on outstanding loans are linked to short-term interest rates. Using administrative data on balance sheets and consumption expenditure of Swedish households, we reveal the cash-flow transmission channel of monetary policy. On average, indebted households reduce consumption spending by an additional 0.23–0.55 percentage points in response to a one-percentage-point increase in the policy rate, relative to a household with no debt. We show that these responses are driven by households that have some or a large share of their debt in contracts where interest rates vary with short-term interest rates, such as adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), which implies that monetary policy shocks are quickly passed through to interest expenses.

Journal of Monetary Economics, 2016. Vol. 78, , Issue 2, p. 50-66

with Rannveig Sigurdardottir

Publisher's Version | Online Appendix 

Media coverage: Centralbanking.com 

Administrative data on monthly wages in Iceland during 1998–2010 provide new insight into nominal wage rigidity. Unlike the data used in previous work, ours have a higher frequency, minimal measurement error, and a long sample including a period of substantial macroeconomic instability. We find that the monthly frequency of nominal wage changes is 13 percent. Although nominal wage cuts are rare, their frequency rises following a large macroeconomic shock. Timing of wage changes is both time-dependent and state-dependent: we find evidence of synchronization of adjustment and contracts of fixed duration, but also that inflation and unemployment over the wage spell affect the timing of adjustment.

Institute for International Economic StudiesMonograph Series, Vol. 101, 2019. Stockholm University 

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Policy Papers and Working Papers Not Intended for Publication

QMM: A Quarterly Macroeconomic Model of the Icelandic Economy

Central Bank of Iceland, Working Paper No. 71, December 2015 (with Ásgeir Daníelsson, Bjarni G. Einarsson, Magnús F. Gudmundsson, Svava J. Haraldsdóttir, Thórarinn G. Pétursson, Signý Sigmundardóttir, and Rósa Sveinsdóttir).

How "Natural" is the Natural Rate? Unemployment Hysteresis in Iceland

Central Bank of Iceland, Working Paper No. 64, July 2013 (with Bjarni Geir Einarsson).

Unemployment Dynamics and Cyclical Fluctuations in the Icelandic Labour Market

Central Bank of Iceland, Working Paper No. 56, December 2011.

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