This article analyzes whether the commonly found negative relationship between parental separation in childhood and educational outcomes is causal or mainly due to selection. We use data on about 100,000 Swedish full biological siblings, born in 1951-64, and perform cross-section and...

This paper examines the long-run effects of the 1980-1982 recession on education and income. Using confidential Census data, I estimate difference-in-differences regressions that exploit variation across counties in recession severity and across cohorts in age at the time of the recession. For...

Previous empirical specifications are not flexible enough to capture the true pattern of sheepskin effects over time. If the quality of the match between the worker and the job contributes to earnings and if higher ability workers more easily reveal their true productivity, sheepskin effects...

Empirical growth regressions typically include mean years of schooling as a proxy for human capital. However, empirical research often finds that the sign and significance of schooling depends on the sample of observations or the specification of the model. We use a nonparametric local-linear...

A number of studies have shown that education reforms extending compulsory schooling reduce criminal behavior of those affected by the reform. We consider the effects of a major Swedish educational reform on crime by exploiting its staggered implementation across Sweden. We first show that the...

The path of urbanization around the world and in particular in China has been rapid. This study addresses measurement of a composite index of networking among key components of societal infrastructure and how it affects the process of urbanization. This study has a number of objectives. First we...

The paper argues that access to public infrastructure plays a crucial role on the presence of private schools in a community, as it could not only minimise the cost of production, but also ensure a high return to private investment. Results using community, school and child/household-level PROBE...

We identify the ages that constitute critical periods in children's development towards their adult health status. For this we use data on families migrating into Sweden from countries that are mostly poorer, with less healthy conditions. Long-run health is proxied by adult height. The relation...

As epidemiological studies have shown that conditions during gestation and early childhood affect adult health outcomes, we examine the effect of local labor market conditions in the year of birth on cognitive development in childhood. To address the endogeneity of labor market conditions, we...