Jonas Kolsrud

Welcome to my page! I'm a senior lecturer at the Department of Economics and Statistics, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden. I'm also affiliated to RFBerlin.

Email: jonas.kolsrud[at]lnu.se

I do research on consumption and saving, public social insurance programmes and wage formation.

Click here for my CV

Working papers

Cognitive Ability in Labor and Capital Markets (2026) (with S. Bastani, K. Karlsson and D. Waldenström), Revise & Resubmit Economic Journal

Link to paper

Work in progress

Entrepreneurship, Wealth, and Pensions in Sweden (with Pavel Brendler (Nottingham U), Johannes Hagen (Jönköping U) and Benjamin Larin (Jönköping U))

Family and State Insurance in Early Career (with Omry Yoresh (LSE))

FX Shocks, Rent-Sharing, and Labour Market Responses (with Andreas Ek (Lund University))

Labour income inequality has increased substantially over the past three decades, many times in tandem with firm profits. We use a combination of foreign-exchange rate shocks together with firm country- and product-level exports to study the role of rent-sharing and to what extent it can account for changes in the income distribution, and how workers respond to firm choices in terms of labour supply and job turnover.

Labour shortages, rent sharing and employment dynamics

I combine linked employer-employee data with data from a firm tendency survey in Sweden to gauge the effects of firms' reports of labour shortages on wage formation and employment dynamics. Firms that report labour shortage raise incumbent workers' wages 0.3 percentage points more compared to firms where there is no shortage. The effects are stronger among high-skilled workers and workers employed in highly productive firms. Further, incumbent workers in firms with labour shortage climb faster up the job ladder in terms of internal wage rank. Firms with labour shortage are more prone to hire workers from non-employment who take jobs further down the job ladder while incumbent workers move up the rungs. Frictions – like labour shortage – thus make it possible for workers to extract more rents but they also increase wage dispersion as rents are uneavenly spread.

See the NIER's Wage formation report (2022) for a shorter version in Swedish.

Labour market effects of high minimum wages: Evidence from Sweden

I study the effect of collective agreed minimum wages on employment and wage formation in the retail and hospitality sectors in Sweden. In the sectors, which traditionally employ many workers with a lower degree of labour market attachment, the minimum wage bite rose from 60% in year 2000 to 70% in 2010. This makes it an interesting case study to see how high minimum wages can become before they start having adverse effects on employment. I find that higher minimum wages increase the likelihood of non-employment among incumbent workers; minimum wages raise total wages but that the relationship is inelastic suggesting that workers earning above the minimum wage are compensated for the minimum wage increments; labour earnings drop since higher wages cannot compensate for reduced employment along both the intensive and extensive margins.

See the NIER's Wage formation report (2021) for a shorter version in Swedish.