Elin Colmsjö

Welcome!

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

During Spring 2026, I am a visiting scholar at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

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

You can find my CV here.

Email: efc@econ.ku.dk

News

March 2026: Our article was discussed in The Economist: Graphic detail. Link to article.
February 2026: I am a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, hosted by Abigail Adams with support from the Morton Shapiro Center.
December 2026: I presented our paper "Workplace Violence" at the Working Environment Conference 2025 in Copenhagen.
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. Link to CEPR description post.

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

Winner of the Best PhD Paper Award at the 2025 CEPR Household Finance Conference

Early wealth transfers are growing relative to inheritances, yet their effects on inequality remain poorly understood. I identify large wealth transfers tied to housing market entries by exploiting a Danish tax policy that allows parents to sell housing to their children below market value, and study their effects on recipients’ investments and wealth. I find that transfers increase the likelihood of starting a business over the next decade while also raising consumption. Instrumenting transfer amounts with a policy-determined cap maintains significant investment responses, indicating that transfers directly support wealth accumulation by shaping financial choices early in life. Effects are strongest among recipients outside the top of parental wealth, suggesting that the business-investment channel promotes intergenerational mobility. Link to working paper.

Presentations: CEPR Household Finance Conference Stockholm 2025, EDGE Jamboree at Cambridge 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: Working Environment Conference 2025, Rockwool Foundation, Danish National Center for the Working Environment (NFA), 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).

The Intergenerational Effects of Health Shocks: Location Choice, Homeownership, and Family Formation. with Matteo Saccarola and Francesco Ruggieri.

Link to abstract. Draft coming soon.

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

Intergenerational Transfers and Wealth Persistence. with Eppie Jean Van Egeraat.

Work in Progress:

The Value of a Conviction. with Abigail Adams and Daphné Skandalis.

Workplace Inspections. with Nadine Kuntz, David Seim, and Daphné Skandalis.

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