Professor in Economics, esp. Housing and Urban Economics

Uppsala University, Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) and Department of Economics, July 1, 2008-.

Research

I have mainly conducted research within the fields of public economics, political economics and labor economics. A large share of my work deals with local government decision-making and fiscal federalism (the relationship between the state and local governments). To give a couple of examples, I have estimated voters’ and politicians’ preferences for locally provided goods and services, studied the effects of intergovernmental grants on municipal decision-making, and investigated if there exist strategic interactions in local government decision-making.

More recently, I have focused my research on the evaluation of public policy. Examples of research questions that I have investigated are: Does mandatory activation of welfare receivers lead to decreased welfare participation rates and to increased employment rates? Does the central government distribute intergovernmental grants tactically in order to increase the probability of winning the next election? Do local politicians and bureaucrats use intergovernmental grants for own purposes?

I have also devoted time to the methodological development of statistical estimators. Among other things, I have investigated how different estimators work in small samples.