This doctoral thesis consists of three self-contained chapters.

“Dying and dissaving” analyses how individuals change saving behavior in response to new information about their expected lifetime. The author uses Swedish administrative data to link negative health shocks to subsequent saving behavior. The study also contributes to understanding the effect of health on wealth.

“Mental health among Swedish PhD students” analyses the health of PhD students over time and compared to the population and investigates what sociodemographic and institutional factors can explain mental health outcomes. The authors use register data to study mental health care uptake among Swedish PhD students that enrolled 1993–2014.

“Cost of loans and moral hazard: A quasi-experiment” analyses the effects of higher borrowing costs on private firms in the presence of financial frictions. The authors use unique and comprehensive data on firm loans and exploit an unexpected increase in the Swedish repo rate in 2010 that exposed firms with long term loans maturing right before or after to different borrowing costs.

CLARA FERNSTRÖM holds a MSc in Economics from Stockholm School of Economics. Her main research interests are household finance and applied microeconomics.

Clara Fernström - Mortality Risk, Moral Hazard, and Mental Health: Essays in Applied Microeconomics