We study the social interaction of non-smokers and smokers as a sequential game, incorporating insights from social psychology and experimental economics into an economic model. Social norms affect human behavior such that non-smokers do not ask smokers to stop smoking and stay with them, even...

This paper identifies several distortions which create barriers to entrepreneurship. First, in addition to the innate entry cost, there are entry costs caused by regulation. Second, union wage policies raise the opportunity cost of entrepreneurship. Third, inefficiencies in the transmission of...

This paper analyzes educational choices and political support for subsidies to higher education in the presence of a time-consistency problem in income redistribution. There may be political support for so generous subsidization that it motivates the median voter to obtain higher education. As a...

This paper develops a theory of consumer boycotts. Some consumers care not only about the products they buy but also about whether the firm behaves ethically. Other consumers do not care about the behavior of the firm but yet may like to give the impression of being ethical consumers....

We evaluate the effects of international outsourcing and labor taxation on wage formation and equilibrium unemployment in dual labor markets. Outsourcing promotes wage dispersion between the high-skilled and low-skilled workers. Higher domestic low-skilled wage tax, higher payroll tax and lower...

In European Welfare States, unskilled workers are typically unionized, while the wage formation of skilled workers is more competitive. To focus on this aspect, we analyze how flexible international outsourcing and labour taxation affect wage formation, employment and welfare in dual domestic...

We present and test a theory of prospective and retrospective pocketbook voting. Focusing on two large reforms in Sweden, we establish a causal chain from policies to sizeable individual gains and losses and then to voting. The Social Democrats proposed budget cuts affecting parents with young...

We study the effects of revenue-neutral labor tax reforms in an imperfectly competitive domestic labor market under Nash wage bargaining and flexible outsourcing. A revenue-neutral increase in the wage tax progression will decrease the negotiated wage rate, increase domestic labor demand and...

Economic theory predicts that military conscription is associated with static inefficiencies as well as with dynamic distortions of the accumulation of human and physical capital. Relative to an economy with an all-volunteer force, output levels and growth rates should be lower in countries that...

Following a seminal contribution by Borjas (1987), a large literature has analyzed how income distribution and redistribution are related to immigration to various rich countries. In this paper, we take a look at the other side of the coin. We analyze emigration from Denmark, which is one of the...