We study a reform by which a standardized model of choice and competition was introduced in tax-financed home care in a majority of Swedish municipalities. The market for home care is of particular interest since it is close to the ideal quasi-market. For identification, we exploit the different...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that prices for some goods and services are higher in larger markets. This paper provides a demand-side explanation for this phenomenon when firms can choose how much to differentiate their products in a model of monopolistic competition with horizontal product...

We provide a model that explains the following empirical observations: i) private ownership is more efficient than public ownership, ii) privatizations are associated with increases in efficiency and iii) the increase in efficiency predates the privatization. The two key mechanisms explaining...

We propose a spatial search-matching model where both job creation and job destruction are endogenous. Workers are ex ante identical but not ex post since their job can be hit by a technological shock, which decreases their productivity. They reside in a city and commuting to the job center...

We develop a model where information about jobs is essentially obtained through friends and relatives, i.e. strong and weak ties. Workers commute to a business center to work and to interact with other people. We find that housing prices increase with the level of social interactions in the city...

This paper focuses on the ability of the labor market to correctly match heterogeneous workers to jobs within a given industry and the role that globalization plays in that process. Using matched worker-firm data from Sweden, we find strong evidence that openness improves the matching between...

I generalize the workhorse model of network competition to include income effects in call demand. Empirical work has shown call demand to increase signi ficantly with income. For any positive income effect, network operators prefer a termination rate above marginal cost if networks are...

Wholesale electricity markets use different market designs to handle congestion in the transmission network. We compare nodal, zonal and discriminatory pricing in general networks with transmission constraints and loop flows. We conclude that in large games with many producers who are allowed to...

Central banks have been made 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 until now unexplored link between social trust and central-bank independence. Our empirical...

Many governments promote small businesses for the dual reasons of fostering ‘breakthrough' innovations and employment growth. In this paper we study the effects of tax and subsidy policies on entrepreneurs' choice of riskiness of an innovation project and on their mode of commercializing the...