This study examines the effects of a congestion tax in central Stockholm on ambient air pollution and the health of local children. We demonstrate that the tax reduced ambient air pollution by 5-15 percent and the rate of acute asthma attacks among young children. We do not see corresponding changes in accidents or hospitalizations for nonrespiratory conditions. As the change in health was more gradual than the change in pollution, it may take time for the full health effects of changes in pollution to materialize if the mechanism is pollution. Hence, short-run estimates of pollution reduction programs may understate long-run health benefits.

Luftföroreningar innebär ett ökande hälsoproblem i många städer runt om i världen. I Sverige har dock luftkvaliteten förbättrats avsevärt sedan 1970-talet, och luftföroreningsnivåerna i svenska städer underskrider allt som oftast världshälsoorganisationens referensvärden. En naturlig fråga är därför om och hur mycket luftföroreningar påverkar hälsan i Sverige i dag. Här sammanfattas två studier om hur svenska barns respiratoriska sjukdomar (t.ex. astma) påverkas av luftföroreningar. Vi visar att respiratorisk hälsa påverkas negativt under perioder med sämre luftkvalitet, och att barn i låginkomstfamiljer påverkas mer än barn i höginkomstfamiljer, samt att införandet av trängselskatter i Stockholm inte bara innebär minskade utsläpp, utan även att antalet vårdbesök pågrund av akuta astmabesvär bland barn minskar betydligt

This paper studies whether adverse selection can rationalize a universal mandate for unemployment insurance (UI). Building on a unique feature of the unemployment policy in Sweden, where workers can opt for supplemental UI coverage above a minimum mandate, we provide the first direct evidence for adverse selection in UI and derive its implications for UI design. We find that the unemployment risk is more than twice as high for workers who buy supplemental coverage. Exploiting variation in risk and prices, we show how 25-30 percent of this correlation is driven by risk-based selection, with the remainder driven by moral hazard. Due to the moral hazard and despite the adverse selection we find that mandating the supplemental coverage to individuals with low willingness-to-pay would be suboptimal. We show under which conditions a design leaving choice to workers would dominate a UI system with a single mandate. In this design, using a subsidy for supplemental coverage is optimal and complementary to the use of a minimum mandate.

Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards? Economists and policymakers are keenly interested in this question – especially lately, as worker representation is widely promoted as an important way to ensure the interests and views of the workers. To investigate this question, we apply a variety of research designs to administrative data from Norway. We find that a worker is paid more and faces less earnings risk if she gets a job in a firm with worker representation on the corporate board. However, these gains in wages and declines in earnings risk are not caused by worker representation per se. Instead, the wage premium and reduced earnings risk reflect that firms with worker representation are likely to be larger and unionized, and that larger and unionized firms tend to both pay a premium and provide better insurance to workers against fluctuations in firm performance. Conditional on the firm’s size and unionization rate, worker representation has little if any effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that while workers may indeed benefit from being employed in firms with worker representation, they would not benefit from legislation mandating worker representation on corporate boards.

We study the impact of lead exposure from birth to adulthood and provide evidence on the mechanisms producing these effects. Following 800,000 children differentially exposed to the phaseout of leaded gasoline in Sweden, we find that even a low exposure affects long-run outcomes, that boys are more affected, and that changes in non-cognitive skills explain a sizeable share of the impact on crime and human capital. The effects are greater above exposure thresholds still relevant for the general population, and reductions in exposure equivalent to the magnitude of the recent redefinition of elevated blood-lead levels can increase earnings by 4%.

We study the presence of other‐regarding preferences in the workplace by exploiting a randomized experiment that changed the monitoring of workers’ health during sick leave. We show that workers’ response to an increase in co‐worker shirking, induced by the experiment, is much stronger than the response to a decrease in co‐worker shirking. The asymmetric spillover effects are consistent with evidence of fairness concerns documented in laboratory experiments. Moreover, we find that the spillover effect is driven by workers with highly flexible and autonomous jobs, suggesting that co‐worker monitoring may be at least as important as formal monitoring in alleviating shirking.

Normally, the temperature decreases with altitude, allowing air pollutants to rise and disperse. During inversion episodes, warmer air at higher altitude traps air pollutants at the ground. By merging vertical temperature profile data from NASA with pollution monitors and health care records, we show that inversions increase the PM10 levels by 25% and children's respiratory health problems by 5.5%. Low-income children are particularly affected, and differences in baseline health seem to be a key mediating factor behind the effect of pollution on the SES health gap. Policies that improve dissemination of information on inversion status may hence improve child health, either through private action or via policies that curb emissions during inversion episodes.

This paper provides a simple, yet robust framework to evaluate the time profile of benefits paid during an unemployment spell. We derive sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the marginal insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment-benefits paid at different times during a spell. Our approach allows us to revisit separate arguments for inclining or declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature and to identify welfare-improving-changes in the benefit profile that account for all relevant arguments jointly: For the empirical implementation, we use administrative data on unemployment, linked to data on consumption, income, and wealth in Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and find that, if anything, the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid earlier the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption affecting the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, hut further increases throughout tie spell. In trading off insurance and incentives, our analysis suggests that the flat benefit profile in Sweden has been too generous overall. However, both from the insurance and the incentives side, we find no evidence to support the introduction of a declining tilt in the profile.

This study examines how a policy that sharply increased alcohol availability during 8.5 months affected the labor productivity of those exposed to it in utero. Compared to the surrounding cohorts, the prenatally exposed children have substantially worse labor market and educational outcomes and lower cognitive and noncognitive ability. Effects on earnings are found throughout the distribution but are largest below the median. Males are more affected than females, consistent with growing evidence that boys are less resilient to early environmental insults. The long-term effects seem primarily driven by changes in prenatal health rather than changes in the childhood environment.

This paper provides a simple, yet general framework to analyze the optimal time profile of benefits during the unemployment spell. We derive simple sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment benefits paid at different times during the unemployment spell. Our general approach allows to revisit and evaluate in a transparent way the separate arguments for inclining or declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature. We then estimate our sufficient statistics using administrative data on unemployment, income and wealth in Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and find that the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid earlier in the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption determining the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, but further increases throughout the spell.

On average, savings and credit play a limited role in smoothing consumption. Our evidence therefore indicates that the recent change from a flat to a declining benefit profile in Sweden has decreased welfare. In fact, the local welfare gains push towards an increasing rather than decreasing benefit profile over the spell.