Elin Colmsjö

Welcome!

I am a fourth-year PhD student at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen and and a PhD Resident Fellow at the Danish Central Bank.

My research focuses on topics in household finance, labor economics, and inequality.

You can find my CV here.

Email: efc@econ.ku.dk or eifc@nationalbanken.dk

News

September 2025: My paper “A Flying Start: Intergenerational Transfers, Wealth Accumulation and Entrepreneurship of Descendants” received the Best PhD Paper Award at the 2025 CEPR Conference on Household Finance.
September 2025: My research on intergenerational wealth transfers is discussed in the Danish academic newspaper "Weekendavisen". Link to article.
September 2025: I present my solo paper "A Flying Start" at the European Doctoral Group in Economics (EDGE) Jamboree 2025 at Cambridge.
August 2025: Me and my co-author Daphné Skandalis visit the The National Research Center for Work Environment (NFA) in Copenhagen to present our project "Workplace Violence".
August 2025: Me and my co-author Daphné Skandalis visit the Rockwool Foundation in Copenhagen to present our project "Workplace Violence".
August 2025: I was a guest on the podcast "Probable Causation" hosted by Jennifer Doleac at Arnold Ventures, talking about our paper "Breaking Bad: How Health Shocks Prompt Crime". Link to episode
June 2025: I presented our paper Workplace Violence at the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) in Naples.
June 2025: Our paper was discussed in the Danish academic newspaper Weekendavisen. Link to article.
June 2025: I presented our paper Workplace Violence at the Nordic Summer Institute in Uppsala.
May 2025: I presented my solo paper "A Flying Start" at the European Association for Young Economists (EAYE) in London.
March 2025: I visited and presented my solo paper "A Flying Start" at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm.
January 2025: Our paper "Breaking Bad: How Health Shocks Prompt Crime" got accepted for publication in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Publications:

Breaking Bad: How Health Shocks Prompt Crime, forthcoming American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. with Steffen Andersen, Gianpaolo Parise and Kim Peijnenburg .

Exploiting plausibly exogenous variations in the timing of cancer diagnoses, we establish that health shocks elicit a large and persistent increase in the probability of committing a crime. This effect materializes in a substantial rise in both first crimes and re-offenses. We uncover evidence for two mechanisms. First, an economic motive leads individuals to compensate the loss of legal revenues with illegal earnings. Second, cancer patients face lower expected cost of punishment through a lower survival probability. Welfare programs that alleviate the economic repercussions of health shocks are effective at mitigating the ensuing negative externality on society. Link to paper; Link to Online Appendix.

Working papers:

A Flying Start: Intergenerational transfers, wealth accumulation and entrepreneurship of descendants.

Solo paper.

The contribution of dynastic wealth transfers to inequality depends on how recipients use them. This study examines how intergenerational inter vivos transfers affect wealth accumulation by shaping savings and investment behavior early in life. In Denmark, a tax policy allows parents to transfer wealth by selling housing to their children below market value, enabling the identification of large, untaxed transfers in administrative data. Receiving an average (USD $100,000) transfer raises business ownership by 31% and stock market participation by 17% over the subsequent decade, with effects increasing in transfer size. Instrumenting transfer amounts with a policy-determined transfer cap reduces but maintains significant investment responses, suggesting that transfers directly support wealth accumulation via behavioral channels. The effects are concentrated amongst recipients with high financial ability—proxied by holding a degree in business, economics or engineering. This group is also more likely to be targeted with housing transfers by parents in a group of siblings. Link to working paper.

Presentations: EDGE Jamboree at Cambridge 2025, CEPR Household Finance Conference Stockholm 2025, Haas School of Business Finance Lunch Seminar (UC Berkeley), Institute for Research on Labour and Employment (IRLE) (UC Berkeley), Danish Academic Economists in North America (DAEiNA) Nordic Economics Workshop for Early-Career Researchers 2025, European Association for Young Economists Conference 2025, Research Institute for Industrial Economics (IFN), Danish Central Bank Research Seminar, University of Copenhagen Lunch Seminar.

Workplace Violence. with Daphné Skandalis.

Draft coming soon.

Presentations: Rockwool Foundation, Danish National Center fr the Working Environment, Swedish Institute for Social Research (Daphné Skandalis) Danish Central Bank Research Seminar, Nordic Economic Institute in Labour Economics 2025, European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) 2025, Innsbruck Job Search Workshop (Daphné Skandalis), European Labor Symposium for Early Career Economists in Paris (ELSE) (Daphné Skandalis).

Parental health shocks. with Matteo Saccarola and Francesco Ruggieri.

Draft coming soon.

Presentations: Labour Lunch Seminar at UC Berkeley (Matteo Saccarola), Haas School of Business Finance Lunch Seminar at UC Berkeley (Matteo Saccarola).

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