This paper utilizes high-quality transaction data from the largest bank in Denmark to study what drives the demand for high-cost consumption loans. I investigate the extent to which adverse events drive loan demand, or if it is more likely to be explained by borrowers' personality traits. I find...

Over the last century, global life expectancy has increased tremendously. A longer planning horizon may change individuals' incentives to work, save, and marry but it has proven challenging to disentangle such incentive effects from those of improved health. In this paper, we study how...

Denmark is one of the richest countries in the world and achieves this in combination with low inequality, low unemployment, and high income security. This performance is often attributed to the Danish labor market model characterized by what has become known as flexicurity. This essay describes...

We exploit exogenous variation from a pension reform in Denmark to estimate the effect of tax subsidies on total private saving. We present new evidence on individuals in the middle of the income distribution and show that a reduction in tax subsidies for retirement saving reduces total private...

An extensive literature shows that reminders can successfully change behavior. Yet, there exists substantial unexplained heterogeneity in their effectiveness, both: (i) across studies, and (ii) across individuals within a particular study. This paper investigates when and why reminders work. We...

Despite its centrality in monetary policy, communication is not a focus in social security reform. We investigate the potential for active communication to dissipate apparently widespread public confusion about the future of social security. We implement a simple information treatment in which...

Behavior in labor and marriage markets follows similar structures when it comes to commitment to long-term relationships. We argue that there is a joint social skill driving stability in both markets. Applying a grouped fixed-effect estimator on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and...

Rising wealth inequality has spurred an increased interest in understanding how and why wealth is correlated across generations. Prior research has found an intergenerational correlation between 0.2 and 0.4 and has emphasized the role of family characteristics in driving this correlation. We...

A large share of young mothers return to work before their child turns one year. Exploiting exogenous variation in daycare vacancy rates, we estimate the causal effects of enrollment age in universal daycare on child development for children younger than two years. We find modest effects of...

We investigate the short-term impact of out-of-home care on child health, schooling and juvenile crime. Using an event study to examine the dynamics around the time of placement, we document a clear deterioration of mental health and increasing crime rates before placement. After placement, we...