Research

Publications:

• "From Epidemic to pandemic: Effects of the Covid-19 outbreak on high school program choices in Sweden" (2023) - with Aino-Maija Aalto and Lucas Tilley, forthcoming, Labour Economics.

• "Connecting the Young: High School Graduates' Matching to First Jobs in Booms and Great Recessions" (2023) - with Lena Hensvik and Oskar Nordström Skans, forthcoming, Economic Journal.

Job market paper:

• • "Lost Opportunities: Market Work during High School, Establishment Closures and the Impact on Career Prospects" (2019)

Abstract: In this paper, I study the importance of market work during high school for graduates' school-to-work transition and career prospects. Relying on Swedish linked employer-employee data over a 30-year period, I show that market work during school provides students with a very important job search channel, accounting for 30 percent of direct transitions into regular employment. I use the fact that some graduates lose out on this opportunity due to establishment closures just prior to graduation and labor market entry. I compare classmates from vocational tracks with the same field of specialization to identify the effects of the closures and show that lost job-finding opportunities due to an establishment closure lead to an immediate and sizable negative effect on employment and income after graduation. The effects persist for up to 10 years, but are not permanent. The accumulated earnings losses are sizeable and correspond to 3 percent of accumulated earnings during the first 10 years since graduation. Parts of the effect appear to be driven by a process where graduates who are subject to a closure of a relevant employer before graduation have to find employment in an industry which is less relevant to their education. The analysis further highlights the role of alternative job-search channels; the impact of a closure is mitigated by the use of parents in the job search process, and effects are larger if a parent also became displaced at the same time.

Working papers and submissions:

• • "Male Childlessness, Economic Inequality and Gender Norms" - with Erica Lindahl and Anna Sjögren

Abstract: In this paper, we document trends in male childlessness in Sweden. We show that the skill gap in male parenthood has declined and that childlessness has increased more in the top and middle of the education distribution than in the bottom. This development stands in contrast to the idea that declines in the likelihood of men to form a family can be understood as a matter of marginalization of men at the bottom of the education and earnings distribution. The aim of the project is to understand to which those patterns can be explained by earnings inequality within marriage markets and gender norms.  Specifically, we use rich Swedish register data to construct marriage markets based on observed preferences for homogamy and relate the earnings gap within marriage markets to childlessness to test whether the increase in childlessness, as a measure of marginalization, partly is related to the relative economic performance in relation to other men. We also relate increases in male childlessness to measures of norms regarding female careers, male breadwinners and shared family responsibility. 

• • "The Extension of Vocational Tracks and the Reliance on Parental Job Search Contacts"

 I analyze how an extension of upper secondary education affected the role of parents in the job finding process by exploiting a large scale trial that took place in Sweden in the late 1980s and extended vocational upper secondary education from two to three years by adding more general education.  The trial generated exogenous variation across municipalities and student cohorts in the availability of longer vocational tracks, which I use to identify the effects on labor market outcomes and on the reliance on parents in the job finding process. I find that the prolongation of vocational tracks lead to a substantial reduction in inactivity rates across the 18-year follow-up period, mostly explained by increased employment rates for low-SES students. The extension also lead to an overall reduction in the propensity to sort into the same establishment as a parent.