Jonna Olsson
I am an Associate Professor (tenure track) in Economics at NHH Norwegian School of Economics and a Research Affiliate at the CEPR (MG). I do research in macroeconomics, with an emphasis on quantitative models, inequality, and labor supply questions in the short and long run.
I obtained my PhD from the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES), Stockholm University, in 2019.
email jonna.s.k.olsson (a) gmail.com or jonna.olsson (a) nhh.no | tel +46(0)70 765 5237 | address NHH, Helleveien 30, 5045 Bergen, Norway |
Publications
Integrated epi-econ assessment: quantitative theory (with Timo Boppart, Karl Harmenberg, John Hassler, and Per Krusell)
Quantitative Economics (Forthcoming) [Paper]
Singles, couples, and their labor supply: long-run trends and short-run fluctuations
AEJ: Macroeconomics (Forthcoming) [Paper]
(previously circulated as: Structural transformation of the labor market and the aggregate economy)
Subjective life expectancies, time preference heterogeneity and wealth inequality (with Richard Foltyn)
Quantitative Economics (2024) [Longer version of paper] [Link]
Labor supply when productivity keeps growing (with Timo Boppart and Per Krusell)
Review of Economic Dynamics (2023) [Link]
Integrated epi-econ assessment of vaccination (with Timo Boppart, Karl Harmenberg, and Per Krusell)
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2022) [Link]
Working papers
Health dynamics and heterogeneous life expectancies (with Richard Foltyn) [Paper]
[Online appendix] [Companion website]
Using biennial data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate age-dependent health dynamics and survival probabilities at annual frequency conditional on race, sex, and health for the US population. The health gradient in life expectancy is steep and persists after controlling for socioeconomic status. Moreover, even conditional on health and socioeconomic status, the racial gap in life expectancy remains large. Model simulations show that this gap affects savings rates but does not play a major role in explaining the racial wealth gap. However, we find that differences in mortality alone imply that black individuals on average can expect to receive 15 percent less in Social Security benefits in present value terms.
Who should work how much? (with Timo Boppart and Per Krusell) [Paper] [NBER WP] [CEPR WP]
A production efficiency perspective naturally leads to the prescription that more productive individuals should work more than less productive individuals. Yet, systematic differences in actual hours worked across high- and low-wage individuals are barely noticeable. We highlight that the insurance available to households is an important determinant behind this fact. Using a dynamic heterogeneous-agent model with insurance frictions, income effects calibrated to match aggregate hours across time and space, and financial frictions that deliver realistic wealth dispersion, we report stark effects of insurance: perfect insurance would raise aggregate labor productivity by 9.6 percent and decrease hours worked by 7.7 percent.
Policy writing
Confronting epidemics: the need for epi-econ IAMs (with Timo Boppart, Karl Harmenberg, John Hassler, and Per Krusell) [Link]
[Prepared for the National Institute of Economic Research, Sweden, 2021]
We discuss what tools would be useful in confronting epidemics, especially from the perspective of economics. Our main proposal is for policymakers to employ “epi-econ IAMs”: explicit Integrated Assessment Models, where epidemiology is integrated with economics. These models are under rapid development, but arguably not yet quite ready for quantitative use.