Abstract: This paper studies the effect of emigration on technological change in sending locations after one of the largest migration events in human history, the mass migration from Europe to the United States in the 19th century. To establish causality, we adoptan instrumental variable strategy that combines local growing-season frost shocks with proximity to emigration ports. Using detailed data on patents, we find that emigration led to an increase in innovative activity in sending localities. Using data on capital and labor inputs in agriculture and industry, we find evidence of an increased capital intensity related to new technologies in both sectors. We argue that these results are consistent with theories of induced (labor-saving) innovation due to high labor costs following emigration.

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Abstract: We study the political effects of mass emigration to the United States in the nineteenth century using data from Sweden. To instrument for total emigration over several decades, we exploit severe local frost shocks that sparked an initial wave of emigration, interacted with within-country travel costs. Our estimates show that emigration substantially increased the local demand for political change, as measured by labor movement membership, strike participation, and voting. Emigration also led to de facto political change, increasing welfare expenditures as well as the likelihood of adopting more inclusive political institutions.

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• Winner of the Oliver E. Williamson Best Conference Paper Award (SIOE, 2016)
• Media: The Economist, World Bank blog summary, Swedish summary (pdf), NSD.

Abstract: We use a tailor-made survey on a Swedish sample to investigate how individuals’ relative income affects their demand for redistribution. We first document that a majority misperceive their position in the income distribution and believe that they are poorer, relative to others, than they actually are. We then inform a subsample about their true relative income and find that individuals who are richer than they initially thought demand less redistribution. This result is driven by individuals with prior right-of- center political preferences who view taxes as distortive and believe that effort, rather than luck, drives individual economic success.

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• Media: Marginal Revolution, Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Nyheter (Ekonomi), Dagens Industri, Svenska Dagbladet, Forskning och Framsteg.