This paper investigates how people differentiate between inequality caused by talent and inequality caused by luck in a large-scale study of the US population. We establish that people distinguish significantly between inequality due to luck and inequality due to talent, even when controlling...

The paper reports the first experimental study on people's fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...

Negative externalities, social and environmental responsibility, income effects, market experimentsThis paper reports the results of a large-scale incentivized experiment investigating individuals' fairness perceptions of the extreme income inequalities generated in winner-take-all competitions....

Earlier studies on income inequality and crime have typically used total income or total earnings. However, it is quite likely that it is changes in permanent rather than in transitory income that affects crime rates. The purpose of this paper is therefore to disentangle the two effects by,...

Do governments increase public employment in election years? This paper investigates this question by using data from Sweden and Finland, two countries that are similar in many respects but in which local elections are held at different points in time. We can thereby separate an election effect...

This study uses a randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate a new program for increased labor market integration of refugees. The program has immediate and substantial short-run effects on employment, corresponding to around 15 percentage points. The effect lasts for three years but eventually...

In their role as agenda setters and implementers of political decisions, bureaucrats potentially have the power to influence decisions in their own favor. It is however difficult to empirically test whether bureaucrats actually are involved in such actions. In this paper we suggest and apply a...

This paper investigates whether mandatory activation programs for welfare receivers have effects on welfare participation, employment and disposable income. In contrast to earlier studies we are able to capture both entry and exit effects. The empirical analysis makes use of a Swedish welfare...

We investigate the impact of commuter train access on individual labor market outcomes. Our study considers the introduction of a commuter train on a pre-existing railroad in Sweden, considerably decreasing commuting times by public transit and hence increasing access to the regional employment...

The emergence of anti-democratic movements is a central puzzle to social science. We study a novel and rich dataset covering Swedish municipalities during the interwar years and find a strong link between the presence of a military garrison and the emergence of fascist parties. We interpret...