Recent publications
This page contains recent publications by faculty, researchers and PhD students at the Department of Economics.
Comprehension in economic games
by Magnus Johannesson
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Economic games are a key tool for studying cooperation and fairness. But many participants misunderstand how these games work—sometimes significantly. A new study using data from over 1,500 participants shows that such misunderstandings are common and can skew results, often making people appear more generous than they truly are.
Procuring unverifiable information
by Mark Voorneveld
Mathematics of Operations Research
What happens when an expert is tasked to gather information and report it to someone else, but can’t prove that they performed the required task, nor that the information they provide is accurately reported? This study shows how a principal can design a payment scheme that incentivizes the expert to act as desired.
Weather shocks, infant mortality, and adaptation: Experimental evidence from Uganda
by Martina Björkman Nyqvist
Journal of Development Economics
Climate change is making extreme weather more dangerous, especially in low-income countries. When rains fail during the growing season, infant deaths go up. This study shows that access to basic community healthcare can cut that risk by nearly half. As the climate gets more unpredictable, stronger healthcare systems could help protect the most vulnerable.
Read the paper
Solid outcomes in finite games
by Jörgen W. Weibull
Journal of Economic Theory
A new solution concept for finite games, called solid outcomes, is introduced. It is robust across game representations, consistent with backward induction, and unaffected by dominated strategies. Solid outcome sets exist in all finite games, and isolated solid outcomes exist in generic extensive-form games with perfect recall. The solution concept has strong selection power, even in generic normal-form games and performs well in classical examples in game theory. Algorithms efficiently identify minimal game blocks, the subsets of strategy profiles that support these outcomes.
Reply to Krefeld-Schwalb et al.: Measuring population heterogeneity requires upholding good scientific practice
by Anna Dreber and Magnus Johannesson
PNAS
We appreciate KHJ's interest in our study and agree with their theoretical points, particularly regarding the limited heterogeneity in WEIRD samples. However, we question KHJ's empirical claims on population heterogeneity, noting that KSJ's paradigms were designed to enhance heterogeneity. Revisiting KSJ's data shows lower heterogeneity estimates than KHJ suggests, especially after excluding inattentive participants. Our findings highlight that online data collection may inflate heterogeneity, underscoring the need for further research.
Personality Traits and Cognitive Ability in Political Selection
by Jaakko Meriläinen
Journal of the European Economic Association
Elected politicians in Finland score higher on cognitive and non-cognitive tests than the general population. Local politicians perform on par with high-skill workers, while national politicians score even higher. This suggests voters and parties select a more competent, motivated, and honest political class.
Group conflict, group composition, and policy convergence
by Karl Wärneryd
Economics Letters
We consider groups that compete to set policy, and show that there may be an incentive to change group composition with respect to policy preferences in such a fashion that equilibrium policies ultimately converge across groups.
Returns to labour mobility
by Lars Ljungqvist
Economic Journal
Returns to labor mobility play a crucial role in macro-labor models but are often overlooked. Using perspectives from (i) labor economics and (ii) industrial organization, we find that the focus on firm size dynamics in (ii) yields robust, large returns. In contrast, focusing on per-worker productivity processes in (i) might give rise to fragilities where parameter perturbations that generate similar targeted statistics can imply very different returns.
Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient
by Magnus Johannesson
Nature Human Behaviour
A genome-wide study found 162 genetic loci linked to income, all with small effects. A polygenic index explained 1–5% of income variance, mostly through indirect effects. The genetic factor correlated with education and was tied to better mental health but worse physical health. These findings highlight the complex genetic influences on income and health.
A framework for evaluating reproducibility and replicability in economics
by Anna Dreber and Magnus Johannesson
Economic Inquiry
We propose a framework for evaluating reproducibility and replicability in economics. Reproducibility is defined as testing if the results of an original study can be reproduced using the same data and replicability is defined as testing if the results of an original study hold in new data. We further divide reproducibility and replicability studies into five types: computational reproducibility, recreate reproducibility, robustness reproducibility, direct replicability and conceptual replicability. In addition to this typology we propose indicators to measure the degree of reproducibility and replicability in both individual studies and for a group of studies.
Understanding Child Sex Trafficking Using Victim-Level Data
by Martina Björkman Nyqvist
Economic Development and Cultural Change
Quantitative research on human trafficking is scant due to lack of data. This study makes use of a unique survey we collected on former victims of trafficking and vulnerable women and girls in the Philippines. We start by exploring the correlates of trafficking and show that household composition (in particular the presence of older sisters) and plausibly exogenous measures of health and economic shocks predict the likelihood of being tracked. We then study the effects of trafficking on victims' intertemporal and risk preferences using entropy balancing. We find that trafficking victims are not differentially patient, but they are more risk-loving. Our novel data and findings are pertinent to the design of policies intending to prevent trafficking and reintegrate victims.
Means-tested programs and interstate migration in the United States
Means-tested programs, in particular Medicaid and Public Housing, significantly reduce the mobility rates of low-income households, especially for the poorest. Half of this negative effect comes from the risk of losing benefits when moving despite being eligible for them. Ensuring the portability of transfers across states improves welfare, as the reform facilitates households to migrate to states offering higher incomes or better amenities.
Labor reallocation effects of furlough schemes: Evidence from two recessions in Spain
by Álvaro Jañez Garcia
European Economic Review
Furlough schemes help stabilize unemployment during recessions by subsidizing temporarily unproductive jobs. However, these schemes crowd out firms' own labor hoarding and increase output and employment volatility. Moreover, these schemes also slow down worker reallocation away from declining to less affected sectors during recessions.