This study estimates intergenerational wealth correlations across up to four generations and examines the degree to which the wealth association between parents and children can be explained by inheritances. Using a Swedish data set with newly hand-collected data on wealth and bequests, we find parent-child rank correlations of 0.3-0.4 and grandparent-grandchild rank correlations of 0.1-0.2. Bequests and gifts appear to be central in this process, accounting for at least half of the parentchild wealth correlation while earnings and education can account for only a quarter.

In this paper, we show that between 1975 and 2005, Sweden exhibited a pattern of job polarization with expansions of the highest-and lowest-paid jobs compared to middle-wage jobs. The most popular explanation for such a pattern is the hypothesis of task-biased technological change, where technological progress reduces the demand for routine middlewage jobs but increases the demand for non-routine jobs located at the tails of the jobwage distribution. However, our estimates do not support this explanation for the 1970s and 1980s. Stronger evidence for task-biased technological change, albeit not conclusive, is found for the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, there is both a statistically and economically significant growth of non-routine jobs and a decline of routine jobs. However, results for wages are mixed; while task-biased technological change cannot explain changes in betweenoccupation wage differentials, it does have considerable explanatory power for changes in within-occupation wage differentials.

The implementation of a copyright protection reform in Sweden in April 2009 suddenly increased the risk of being caught and punished for illegal file sharing. This paper investigates the impact of the reform on illegal file sharing and music sales using a differencein-differences approach with Norway and Finland as control groups. We find that the reform decreased Internet traffic by 16% and increased music sales by 36% during the first six months. Pirated music therefore seems to be a strong substitute to legal music. However, the reform effects disappeared almost completely after six months, likely because of the weak enforcement of the law.

No abstract