Entrepreneurship is often hailed as a path to upward intergenerational mobility, but few studies have explicitly tested this belief. Drawing on insights from the literature on entrepreneurial heterogeneity and returns, we compare the extent and direction of mobility across generations among Swedish entrepreneurs and employees. We study intergenerational income rank mobility using high-quality lifetime income measures for 215,000 father-son pairs. Entrepreneurs are drawn disproportionately from both poorer and richer families, but the patterns we uncover hold across the entire paternal income distribution. Sons who own incorporated businesses are more upwardly mobile across generations than employees; sons who own unincorporated businesses are more downwardly mobile. Selection on (un)observable traits fully explains incorporated sons’ moves up, but only a small share of unincorporated sons’ moves down. Income underreporting and, crucially, lower returns to human capital explain the remaining downward mobility. Unincorporated ventures appear to use entrepreneurs’ human capital inefficiently.

We study spillover effects within co-offending networks by leveraging deaths of co-offenders for causal identification. Our results demonstrate that the death of a co-offender significantly reduces the criminal activities of other network members. We observe a decaying pattern in the magnitude of these spillover effects: individuals directly linked to a deceased offender experience the most significant impact, followed by those two steps away, and then those three steps away. Moreover, we find that the death of a more central co-offender leads to a larger reduction in aggregate crime. We also provide evidence consistent with a new theoretical prediction suggesting that the loss of a co-offender shrinks the future information set of offenders, altering their perceptions of the probability of being convicted and consequently affecting their criminal behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding spillover effects for policymakers seeking to develop more effective strategies for crime prevention.

We study spillover effects within criminal networks by leveraging the deaths of co-offenders as a source of causal identification. We find that the death of a co-offender significantly reduces the criminal activities of other network members. These spillover effects display a decaying pattern: offenders directly linked to a deceased co-offender experience the most significant impact, followed by those two steps away, and then those three steps away. Moreover, we find that the death of a more central co-offender leads to a larger reduction in aggregate crime, underlining the importance of network position in shaping spillover effects. We also provide evidence suggesting that the loss of a co-offender shrinks the future information set of offenders, which can influence their perceived probability of being convicted and consequently their criminal behaviour. Our findings highlight the importance of accounting for spillover effects in designing more effective strategies for crime prevention.

Under 2021 tillbringade mer än 26 000 barn och ungdomar mellan 0 och 20 år minst en natt i samhällsvård. Den vanligaste formen av samhällsvård är placering i familjehem, då barn och ungdomar bor i privata hem tillsammans med en fosterfamilj. Den näst vanligaste formen av placering är institutionsvård, däribland hem för vård eller boende (HVB) samt särskilda ungdomshem (SiS-hem) som har en högre nivå av tillsyn och säkerhet. Beslutet att förflytta ett barn från sin familj är ett av de största ingreppen i barnets och familjens liv vi som samhälle kan göra. Det kräver att våra representanter (socialarbetare och domare) väger målen att bevara familjen och familjens stabilitet mot målen att skydda barn från missbruk och försummelse samt riskerna förknippade med självskadebeteenden som drogmissbruk och kriminalitet. Viktiga delar i den här diskussionen är bland annat vilken typ av stödåtgärder (om alls några) som ska ges till barnets egen familj när barnet inte omhändertas och vilken typ av samhällsvård som ska ges till barn som omhändertas.

Samhället kan välja att bekämpa brott på många olika sätt. Vi beskriver hurinsatser som förbättrar hälsan hos befolkningen kan vara ett sätt att bekämpabrottslighet. En växande litteratur inom nationalekonomi som studerar kausalasamband visar att hälso- och sjukvård kan ha en rehabiliterande effekt för demed hög risk att begå brott. Vi presenterar även en ny svensk studie som visar attintagna som spenderade längre tid i fängelse, och därmed tog del av mer hälso-och sjukvård, hade bättre förutsättningar för en långsiktig fysisk och mentalhälsa utan att öka risken för återfall i brottslighe

This paper studies the health effects of Swedish prison reforms that held sentences constant but increased the share of time inmates had to serve. The increased time served did not harm post-release health and actually reduced mortality risk. We find especially large decreases in mortality for offenders not previously incarcerated, younger offenders, and those more attached to the labor market. Risk of suicide and circulatory death fell for inmates with mental health problems and older inmates, respectively. In-prison health care utilization and program participation increased with time served, suggesting health care treatment and services as the key mechanism for mortality declines.

Despite the consensus that entrepreneurship runs in the family, we lack evidence regarding the total importance of family and community background, as well as the relative importance of different background influences that affect entrepreneurship. We draw on human capital formation theories to argue that families and communities provide a salient context for the development of individual entrepreneurial skills and preferences, beyond the existing focus on parental entrepreneurship. We posit that early influences are more important than later influences and propose a hierarchy of family influences, whereby genes have the largest explanatory power, followed by parental entrepreneurship, neighborhoods, and parental resources, and finally by parental immigration, family structure, and sibling peers. Finally, we  argue that the  higher human and financial capital intensity of incorporated relative to unincorporated entrepreneurship predictably alters the hierarchy of family influences, as does gender. Sibling correlations estimated on Swedish register data confirm our hypotheses.  

Social network analysis can help us understand more about the root causes of delinquent behavior and crime and provide practical guidance for the design of crime prevention policies. To illustrate these points, we first present a selective review of several key studies and findings from the criminology and police studies literature. We then turn to a presentation of recent contributions made by network economists. We highlight 10 policy lessons and provide a discussion of recent developments in the use of big data and computer technology.

This article illustrates how tools from social network analysis can be used to provide practical guidance for the design of crime prevention policies.