Research

Job Market Paper


  • School Choice, Admission Rules and Segregation in Primary Schools (link to paper)

(with Dany Kessel)

We study school segregation under different admission rules in a setting with centralized school choice and assignment by deferred acceptance. Using Swedish administrative data on primary school choices, household characteristics and school attributes, we simulate counterfactual student allocations using proximity, lottery and affirmative action to determine priorities to oversubscribed schools. We estimate households' preferences to predict school choices under these three counterfactual priority structures. While school choice is often hailed as a way to cut the ties between residential and school segregation, our results suggest that strong preferences for proximity to the school consolidates this relationship, especially when combined with proximity-based priorities. Admission based on lottery or affirmative action may, however, weaken this link. 18.5 percent of the variance in students' socioeconomic status (SES) can be explained by the school when assignment is based on proximity, but decreases by 8.5 percent (1.6 ppt) with lottery-based priorities and by 20 percent (3.7 ppt) when implementing affirmative action. In welfare terms, the reduced segregation stemming from abandoning proximity-based priorities comes at a low cost: our results suggest that the effects on utility for the average household is small and that almost 90 percent of all children are assigned to a top-three choice under all priority structures

Working papers


  • Temporary Refugee Protection and Labor-Market Outcomes

(with Birthe Larsen and Matilda Kilström)

[1] PDF (updated March 2021), [2] Copenhagen Business School Working Paper 5-2018

Work in progress


  • Skipping the Impossible in School Choice: A Swedish Replication Study

(with Tommy Andersson, Dany Kessel, and Nils Lager)


  • The Effect of School Closures on Student Performance in Sweden During the Covid-19 Pandemic

(with Annika Lindskog)


  • Are Parents Uninformed? The Impact of School Performance Information on School Choices

(with Dany Kessel, working paper coming soon)


  • The Effects of Performance Based Bonuses in the Swedish Language Training Program for Immigrants


  • Tax Windfalls, Self-Employment, and Choice of Occupation

(with Johan Egebark)


  • On the Effects of Disability Insurance on Health: Evidence from Sweden

(with David Seim)