In 1995, the Swedish government reformed the parental leave system with the view to increase the share of fathers in child care, change gender roles in society, and improve the chances of mothers in the labor market. We investigate a unique data set comprising the entire population of Swedish...

A firm facing liquidity constraints in a recession may increase its price to exploit locked-in consumers in an attempt to boost short-run profits. We find support for such behaviour for Swedish regional newspapers during a deep recession. Newspapers sell both subscriptions and advertising space,...

Sweden deregulated the prices for dental services in 1999. Twenty-one Swedish county councils provide public dental services. They compete with 3000 small independent private firms. Public and private providers are subsidized by the government to an equal extent, but most of the costs are borne...

In 2002 the number of months reserved for fathers in the Swedish parental leave system increased from one to two. This coincided with an increase of total time of parental leave from 12 to 13 months. The results are obtained using a natural experiment approach, comparing the behavior of parents...

The demand for gasoline in Sweden follows a seasonal cycle. The paper investigates the response in prices and profits over the cycle. In contrast to what has been found for the gasoline market in the United States, we find no support for seasonal price changes compatible with the theories for...

For Swedish newspaper firms, a market with high switching costs, the subscription market, and a market with low switching costs, the advertising market, are of approximately equal importance. When Sweden enters a deep recession, we find that liquidity constraints influence the pricing decision...

Using interview data on preferences for changes in own and spouse’s labor supply, I find that men put a higher value on women’s non-market time than vice versa. This is the opposite of what the unitary model of the household predicts when both spouses participate in labor market work.

Swedish parents are entitled to government paid benefits to take care of sick children. In this paper we show that the gender distribution of paid care for sick children is a good proxy for the gender division of household work. Using two examples we show that registry data on care for sick...

This paper provides an empirical examination of third-degree price discrimination in the Swedish newspaper industry. The results show that price discrimination is more prevalent in competitive markets and among newspapers with low market shares. This supports predictions from recent theoretical...

This paper provides a detailed examination of price responses in the Swedish gasoline market to changes in the world market price. We use daily price data from one of the leading retail chains together with input costs (spot market price and exchange rate)for the period January 1980 to December...