For immigrants, intermarriage with natives is assumed to have an assimilating role due to the enhancement of local human capital such a union creates in the form of improved knowledge about host country institutions, language and customs as well as access to native spouses’ networks and...

We use a Swedish sickness insurance reform to show that among married couples a partner’s benefit level affects spousal labour supply. The spousal elasticity of sick days with respect to the partner’s benefit is estimated to be 0.4, which is about one-fourth of the own labor supply...

The degree of income inequality in Sweden has varied substantially since the 1970s. This study analyzes whether this variation has affected the crime rate using a panel of Swedish county-level data for the period 1973–2000. We consider various measures of income inequality to evaluate which...

This paper studies whether the degree of female representation in Swedish local councils <p> affects local public expenditure patterns. Theoretically, the individual preferences of elected <p> representatives may impact public expenditure if full policy commitment is not feasible. To <p> empirically...</p></p></p>

This paper investigates the effect of applying gender quotas on policy decisions. I first examine the effect of gender quotas on the representation of female legislators, study the correlation between gender quotas and different types of government expenditures, and then use quotas as an...

The increased demand for a more equal parental sharing of the responsibilities for children has led many countries to reconstruct their parental leave systems so to provide stronger incentives for fathers to participate in childcare. Father’s quotas are becoming widely spread across Europe....

This paper explores the identity formation of a cohort of students with immigrant backgrounds in Sweden and the consequences of identity for subsequent labor market outcomes. Unique for this study is that identity is defined according to a two-dimensional acculturation framework based on both...

Recent studies find that women are less competitive than men. This gender difference in competitiveness has been suggested as one possible explanation for why men occupy the majority of top positions in many sectors. In this study we explore competitiveness in children, with the premise that...

We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for competition, altruism and risk. For competitiveness, we explore two different tasks that differ in associated stereotypes. We find no gender difference in competitiveness when comparing performance under competition to...

This paper compares cooperation among Columbian and Swedish children aged 9-12. We illustrate the dynamics of the prisoner’s dilemma in a new task that is easily understood by children and performed during a physical education class. We find some evidence that children cooperate more in Sweden...