My research

Indexation and the politics of automatic government

When policy parameters such as benefit levels or tax thresholds are indexed to a price or wage benchmark, their real value is adjusted automatically; when they are set in nominal terms, maintaining their value requires repeated political decisions. In an ongoing project with Axel Cronert, I study how this difference affects policy stability, long-term retrenchment and expansion, and the extent to which policies become politicized. Our current work draws on a new dataset covering 313 social-security parameters in 36 countries between 2000 and 2024.

Measurement and conceptualization

Together with Axel Cronert, I have developed concepts and measures for studying electoral competition and political bargaining. A central aim is to capture the uncertainty and choices facing political actors in multiparty democracies. Our approach to electoral competitiveness estimates parties' and governments' chances of holding office by combining uncertainty about election results with uncertainty about subsequent government formation. In related work, we conceptualize bargaining complexity as the amount of choice facing negotiators and measure it using the probabilities of different bargaining outcomes. Applied to government formation, this approach incorporates both parliamentary arithmetic and relations between parties, including ideological differences and previous cooperation. These tools allow us to examine political incentives and negotiation processes that conventional measures, such as vote margins or the number of parties, often fail to capture. Read more.

Information, tax incentives and labour supply

Tax incentives do not necessarily translate into changes in labour supply if people have limited information about the incentives they face. To examine the importance of such information, Linuz Aggeborn, Rafael Ahlskog, and I carried out a large field experiment where we sent information about the Swedish earned income tax credit to approximately 37,000 parental couples and followed their subsequent earnings and employment using administrative data. Despite the substantial and poorly understood incentives, we found no detectable effect on labour supply. Read more.

Voter mobilization and GOTV experiments

I have been involved in several field experiments that investigate how get-out-the-vote campaigns affect electoral participation. In an experiment during Sweden's 2014 European Parliament election, I found that door-to-door canvassing by party activists increased turnout, particularly among occasional and first-time voters. In a subsequent study with Karl-Oskar Lindgren and Sven Oskarsson, we evaluated text-message reminders during the 2019 European Parliament election, randomly assigning 250,000 people to receive a reminder from a sample of more than three million. The reminders produced a small increase in turnout. We also examined effects on other household members and colleagues, finding variation in household spillovers, including negative effects in some groups, and little evidence of workplace spillovers.Read more.

Political recruitment, social ties and representation

Becoming politically active and gaining access to elected office depend on both individual engagement and opportunities for participation. Using Swedish population registers and surveys, my collaborators and I examine how family backgrounds, social networks, civic associations and party recruitment shape these processes. Our research shows strong transmission of party affiliation within political families, with patterns pointing primarily to socialization rather than shared economic circumstances. We also find that having schoolmates whose parents are politicians can increase political participation later in life. Other findings challenge common explanations of participation and representation: the association between civic membership and political activity appears largely driven by self-selection, while immigrants' underrepresentation cannot be explained by a shortage of people interested in running for office. Instead, important barriers arise in securing nominations and electable positions on party lists. Read more.

Fiscal opportunism and sustainability

The discourse on fiscal sustainability has been dominated by an overly simplified idea of a deficit bias caused by electoral competition and governments' incentives to satisfy voters' immediate demands. A recurring theme in my research on this topic is to provide a more nuanced understanding of the tension between responding to voters' demands and maintaining sustainable public finances. In my dissertation, I examined the electoral costs of austerity, how perceptions of fairness and responsibility affect support for fiscal consolidation, and how mistaken assessments of the economy can contribute to public debt. In more recent work with Axel Cronert, I investigate whether electoral competition encourages governments to sacrifice long-term objectives for immediate political gains. Combining analyses of Swedish local governments with surveys and experiments among politicians, we find stronger evidence of policy moderation than of short-sighted fiscal choices. We also show that support for public investment depends on how its immediate costs are financed. Together, these studies question simple accounts of democratic fiscal policy as inherently short-sighted. Read more.

Migration and public finances

I study how migration within Europe affects public finances and how these effects vary across countries and welfare systems. As part of the REMINDER project, my collaborators and I combined household survey data with national accounts to estimate the taxes paid, benefits received and public services used by EU migrants across 29 European countries. Our estimates suggest that EU migrants generally made modest positive net fiscal contributions during the period studied, although outcomes varied across countries. Related work examines differences between welfare regimes, the financing of unemployment benefits and the particular case of Slovakia. Read more.