Who Fed China? with Asger M. Wingender (1. version: October 2023, latest version May 2025)
China liberalized imports of agricultural goods upon WTO accession, triggering an unprecedented demand shock to global agriculture. However, the Chinese self-sufficiency policy still limits imports of certain agricultural products. We exploit this variation across products to trace the effects of Chinese demand from the global level to the country level, and down to the local level in Brazil and the United States, China's main suppliers. Across all levels of aggregation, we find that cropland expanded to meet Chinese demand to an extent that initial fears of soaring food prices proved to be unfounded. While benefiting farmers and farm workers, we find that the cropland expansion put significant pressure on global forests. Our study provides the first causal estimates of the effects of a demand shock to global agriculture..Lec Echos (in French) [English version here]
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School Closures, Mortality, and Human Capital: Evidence from the Universe of Closures during the 1918 Pandemic in Sweden with Christian M. Dahl, Peter S. Jensen, Martin Karlsson, and Daniel Kühnle., RR AEJ:Policy
This study investigates the impact of primary-school closures during the 1918 Pandemic in Sweden on mortality and the long-run outcomes of children. Combining the universe of death certificates for over 500,000 individuals from 1914 to 1920 with newly-collected archival data on school closures in more than 2,100 school districts, we employ high-frequency event studies at both weekly and daily intervals to examine the relationship between mortality and school closures. Our findings show that schools were closed in response to a local surge in influenza-related deaths two weeks prior to the closure. Next, we exploit the speed of closure and document that implementing school closures faster significantly reduced peak-level mortality rates, effectively saving the lives of primary-aged individuals. Finally, we track the long-term outcomes of the affected school children (around 100,000 per school grade) throughout their life cycle and compare them to those who were too young to attend school during the pandemic school closures. The precise estimates reveal relatively minor and mostly inconsequential effects of the closures on various outcomes, including longevity, employment, and income.Left in Charge: Political Rule and the Rise of Local Welfare with P.S. Jensen
This paper examines the impact of left-wing political rule on local government spending. We exploit a late 1910s institutional reform that replaced royally appointed, typically non-socialist, town mayors with democratically elected ones, likely increasing the probability of electing a Social Democratic mayor. Our analysis confirms that the reform raised the likelihood of towns having a Social Democratic mayor, which in turn led to higher local spending, particularly on poor relief and unemployment assistance, without any clear and robust negative effects on the local economy. These additional expenditures were financed through higher direct taxes. Our findings highlight the significant role left-wing parties played in shaping the early welfare state.
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Labor-Market Effects of Introducing the 8-Hour Workday with Marius Gunnesmo, RR in EER
In 1919, the Danish craft and industrial sector permanently adopted the 8-hour workday, representing the largest reduction in working hours in the country’s history. We collected quarterly data on hourly wages and employment from 1914 to 1931 across occupation groups, covering Copenhagen and the aggregate of all other provincial cities in Denmark. By exploiting variation in percent work-time reductions across occupation groups and regions, we examine the income and employment effects of the reform. Our findings reveal a compensating rise in hourly wages in Copenhagen, though this increase was insufficient to offset the decline in weekly income due to fewer working hours. Furthermore, we observe that the reduction in working hours was mitigated by new hires, particularly of unskilled workers. Overall, our results suggest that reductions in work hours were not (in any region) fully compensated by gains in hourly wages but tend to support the ``work-sharing'' hypothesis.
Redistribution, Local Spending, and Growth: Evidence from the Origins of a Municipal Equalization Fund with Peter Sandholt Jensen
This paper examines how intergovernmental transfers affect local government behavior and economic outcomes during the early stages of welfare state formation in Denmark. We exploit a 1937 reform that reimbursed municipal spending on social, medical, and school services (``MEF grants''). Using newly digitized annual panel data and a shift-share like IV strategy, we show that these grants expanded municipal budgets (crowding-in), reduced income inequality, and did not reduce average income or firm profitability. These findings contribute to long-standing debates on the equity-efficiency tradeoff and show that redistributive transfers can expand local welfare capacity without incurring significant growth costs.Religion as Social Insurance: Evidence from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 with Philipp Ager, Ezra Karger, and Lars Lønstrup. Latest version: 2024