We report evidence that salience may have economically significant effects on homeowners' borrowing behavior, through a bias in favour of less salient but more costly loans. We outline a simple model in which some consumers are biased. Under plausible assumptions, the bias may affect prices in...

Following a severe contraction in the early 1990s, the Swedish economy accumulated a strong record of output growth coupled with a disappointing performance in the labor market. As of 2005, hours worked per person 20-64 years of age are 10.5 percent below the 1990 peak and a mere one percent...

This paper analyses the effects of the Single European Market and Swedish Investment liberalisation on the structure of Swedish multinationals with their EU affiliates. The empirical results suggest that the determinants associated with horizontal and vertical multinationals have become...

Guilt averse individuals experience a utility loss if they believe they let someone down. In particular, generosity depends on what the donor believes that the recipient expects to receive. In experimental work, several authors have identified a positive correlation between such second-order...

We analyse the change in family gross income inequality between 1951 and 1973. We use two new samples of the Swedish population from 1951 and 1956 containing tax register data, and compare the results with those obtained from the Swedish Level of Living survey from 1967 and 1973. Gini...

Rapid price decreases for ICT-products in the 1990s have been largely attributed to the introduction of hedonic price indexes. Would hedonic price indexing also have large effects on measured price and productivity during earlier technological breakthroughs? This paper investigates the impact of...

Billions of euros are allocated every year to university research. Increased specialisation and international integration of research and researchers has sharply raised the need for comparisons of performance across fields, institutions and individual researchers. However, there is still no...

We estimate the effects of the implementation of a compulsory work injury insurance in Sweden in 1978 on compensating wage differentials. This involves two steps. First, we investigate if there are compensating wage differentials on the Swedish labor market and second, we assess if these were...

Does the combination of inflation and high corporate taxes explain the increase in bank leverage in the 20th century? Inflation automatically increases bank debt, while high corporate taxes hinder capital accumulation. Capital ratios therefore drop, until leverage-induced returns are sufficient...

The size-wage effect is well documented in the empirical literature, and typical attempts of explanation center on the supply side, using variations of the human capital approach, perhaps combined with institutional theories. With conclusive evidence of its source yet to emerge, an alternative...