In this paper, we argue that fundamental reforms of the Swedish business sector can explain the remarkable productivity and employment growth that followed the deep economic crisis in Sweden in the early 1990s. In the 1970s and 1980s, Sweden had one of the most regulated business sectors in the...

This paper studies the effect of the firm-size distribution on the relationship between employment and output. We construct a theoretical model, which predicts that changes in demand for industry output have larger effects on employment in industries characterised by a distribution that is more...

We analyze investment decisions when information is costly, with and without delegation to an agent. We use a rational-inattention model and compare it with a canonical signal-extraction model. We identify three "investment conditions". In "sour" conditions, no information is acquired and no...

We survey the literature on social networks by putting together the economics, sociological and physics/applied mathematics approaches, showing their similarities and differences. We expose, in particular, the two main ways of modeling network formation. While the physics/applied mathematics...

We investigate to what extent tolerance, as measured by attitudes toward different types of neighbors, affects economic growth. Data from the World Values Survey enables us to investigate tolerance–growth relationships for 54 countries. We provide estimates based on cross-sectional as well as...

Tolerance has the potential to affect both economic growth and wellbeing. It is therefore important to discern its determinants. We add to the literature by investigating whether the degree to which economic institutions and policies are market-oriented is related to different measures of...

Tolerance is a distinguishing feature of Western culture: There is a widespread attitude that people should be allowed to say what they want even if one dislikes the message. Still, the degree of tolerance varies between and within countries, as well as over time, and if one values this kind of...

In a comment to Dahlberg, Edmark and Lundqvist (2012), Nekby and Pettersson-Lidbom (2012) argue (i) that the refugee placement program should be measured with contracted rather than actually placed refugees, and claim that the correlation between the two measures is insignificant and close to...

I establish a positive relationship between family ties and civic virtues, as captured by disapproval of tax and benefit cheating, corruption, and a range of other dimensions of exploiting others for personal gain. I find that family ties are a complement to social capital, using within country...

Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics, has written a thought-provoking and ambitious book: Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Princeton University Press, 2013). The book is laudable for its emphasis on innovation, for its discussion of...