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 paradox. Attempts to explain this gap often focus on searching costs, information frictions and...

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 reform was announced, most analysts projected – in line with tax capitalization theory –...

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 change, and that institutions affect both the supply and direction of entrepreneurship. While...

The paper analyses the interaction between economic incentives and work norms in the context of social insurance. If the work norm is endogenous in the sense that it is weaker when the population share of beneficiaries is higher, then voters will choose less generous benefits than otherwise. We...

Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or...

Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or...

We study the effect of child care costs on the fertility behavior of Swedish women and find that reductions in child care charges influence fertility decisions, even when costs are initially highly subsidized. Exploiting the exogenous variation in child care costs caused by a Swedish child care...

The paper discusses a number of threats to the financial sustainability of social spending: increased internationalization of national economies, gradually higher relative costs of producing a number of human services, the “graying” of the population, slower productivity growth in the...

This paper utilizes data from a Swedish household survey for 1984 (The HUS data) in combination with data on public daycare fees and spaces per child by community. We argue that the subsidy rate and availability of spaces determined by the political leaders of the community is to a large extent...

This paper presents annual Swedish time series data on the top marginal tax wedge and marginal tax wedges on labor income for a low-, average- and high-income earners for the period 1862 to 2013. The tax wedges were initially low and the tax system proportional. The tax wedges began to increase...