Martin Nordin

Lund University | LU · Department of Economics and Agrifood Economics Centre

Using the Swedish military enlistment test, this paper estimates the return to schooling for individuals belonging to different parts of the ability distribution. It also attempts to predict whether an endogenous test score causes bias in the “ability-specific” returns to schooling that varies with the test score. A significant finding is that a hi...

This paper adds to the sparse literature on the consequences of education-occupation mismatches. It examines the income penalty for field of education-occupation mismatches for men and women with higher education degrees in Sweden and reveals that the penalty for such mismatches is large for both men and women. For mismatched men the income penalty...

This study uses a cognitive test score, the Swedish Military Enlistment test taken at age 18, to identify whether the ethnic employment and income gap in Sweden is caused by a pre-market skill gap and/or ethnic discrimination. The employment gap and income gap are estimated for males born in Sweden with different ethnic backgrounds: their paren...

The labour market consequences of early-onset or congenital disabilities have received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we study the consequences of cerebral palsy (CP), a lifelong early onset disability, and pathways through which it affects labour outcomes. We use data from multiple linked Swedish National Population Registers b...

We study exposure to grading bias and provide novel evidence of its impact on mental health. Grading bias, which we interpret as over‐grading, is constructed as the residual of final upper secondary school grades having controlled for results in a standardized test, itself not subject to grading leniency. Grading bias is further isolated by conside...

A key policy question is whether continued expansion of university education is beneficial for the marginally eligible student. In this paper we exploit an arbitrary university eligibility rule combined with regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of university attendance on healthcare utilization amongst young adults in Swede...

Various grading reforms and trends of more lenient grading have contributed to grade inflation in Sweden and other countries. Previous research shows that over-grading increases higher education enrolment, achievements and earnings, but no study has yet addressed the potential impact of grading bias on health. In this paper, we hypothesize that ove...

This paper exploits an arbitrary university eligibility rule in Sweden combined with regression discontinuity to estimate the impact of university education on health derived demand for medical care. We find a clear jump in university attendance due to university eligibility of between 10 and 14 percentage points. For females this implies a 30-40%...

This study is the first to evaluate the setting up aid (SUA), in the Rural Development Programme. For Sweden, we investigate if the aid, firstly, speeds up the transition process to become manager of a farm and, secondly, affects income from farming and survival of the farm. The approach builds on a regression discontinuity design and explores an a...

Universities are often viewed as engines of local economic growth that could mitigate rural depopulation. However, university studies might make individuals more prone to move. We explore this issue in a quasi‐experiment arising due to a sudden reduction in the number of student places at a regional university in northern Sweden in 1998. We find th...

This study examines the consequences of grade inflation at the upper secondary education level on enrolment in higher education and earnings for Sweden. Although grade inflation is unfair and may imply inefficient allocation of human resources, current knowledge of grade inflation effects on individual outcomes is scarce. One explanation is probabl...

Investments in tertiary education have increased substantially in most developed countries and in an expanding system it is important to explore the tertiary payoff for students at the margin of enrolling in tertiary education. This study uses a discontinuity in the Swedish tertiary eligibility requirement to estimate the probability of enrolling i...

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of farmers’ income in Sweden. The results indicate that farm households in Sweden do well from a standard‐of‐living perspective, but that farming is still a low‐paid occupation from a return‐on‐skills perspective. Nevertheless, farm earnings increased faster over the study period than earnings in the gen...

Although grade inflation is unfair and may imply inefficient allocation of human resources, current knowledge of grade inflation effects on individual outcomes is scarce. One explanation is probably the challenge of measuring and estimating causal grade inflation effects. This study examines the consequences of grade inflation at the upper secondar...

We provide new evidence on some of the mechanisms reflected in the intergenerational transmission of human capital. Applying both an adoption and a twin design to rich data from the Swedish military enlistment, we show that greater parental education increases sons’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills, as well as their health. The estimates are in m...

Objectives This paper estimates the effect of tertiary education eligibility on crime in Sweden. The hypothesis tested is that continuing to higher education decreases crime rates since it allows young people to escape inactivity and idleness, which are known to trigger crime. However, to qualify for tertiary education, individuals have to meet the...

This study is the first to estimate the effect of Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) on nutrient runoff using abatement data and water samples on a large scale. This unique combination of data sources identifies all farms located upstream from a given water sampling site. By using watersheds that cover 91% of the Swedish land area and AES payments to...

This paper estimates the impact of university education on medical care use and its income related inequality. We do this by exploiting an arbitrary university eligibility rule in Sweden combined with regression discontinuity design for the years 2003-2013 for students who graduated 2003-2005. We find a clear jump in university attendance due to un...

This study reinvestigates the relationship between unemployment and crime, but is the first to focus explicitly on the effects of long-term unemployment on crime. A unique finding is that long-term unemployment shows a strong association with violent crime, an effect which is greater than that of total unemployment on property crime in this and mos...

This study evaluates the impact of agricultural subsidies (CAP) on employment outside the agricultural sector. A side-effect of the decoupling reform in 2005 was that Sweden introduced a grassland support which caused a redistribution of payments among regions. This heterogeneity in transfers is used to identify the effects of government transfers...

This article analyzes the effects of extension services regarding the use of nutrients in Swedish agriculture on nutrient balances and farms’ finances. The key to our research design is that extension visits vary between agents (some agents give more consultation than others), which leads to random variation in “treatment.” We find that the service...

This study explores an apparently paradoxical finding in farming and fishing: low economic returns, but a high rate of occupational transmission across generations of farmers and fishers. Using a sibling model containing 11,924 children of Swedish farmers and fishers in 2012, we estimate that farmers' sons who became farmers received 28 per cent lo...

This study uses aggregated municipality data, for the years 2001–2009, to explore whether direct payments to farmers affect agricultural employment in Swedish municipalities. The decoupling reform in 2005 included a new grassland support payment accompanied by management obligations that had unexpectedly high redistributive consequences as it great...

This study uses US survey data and Swedish register data to estimate and compare the relationship between returns to schooling and ability. A significant and positive relationship is found for Sweden, but not for the USA. Based on the predictions of the optimal schooling model it is argues that measured differences in the relationship between retur...

By evaluating the employment effects of the grassland subsidy, introduced in Sweden in 2005, this study provides empirical evidence of the importance of taking land use practices into account. The subsidy was included as a part of the decoupled direct payments to the farmers. Using farm-level data (FADN) for the period 1998 to 2008, this study find...

Recent research has shown that there is a substantial skill difference in Sweden between natives and second-generation immigrants. The objective of this study is to find out whether there exists a relationship between immigrant school segregation and the individual’s human capital. The variation in immigrant concentration rate between cohorts withi...

This study analyzes the socioeconomic gradient in drug utilization. We use The Swedish Prescribed Drug Register, merged with the Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF), and the study sample consists of 8138 individuals. We find a positive education gradient (but no income gradient) in drug utilization, after controlling for health indicators. Wherea...

In this paper, we focus on possible causal mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission of human capital. For this purpose, we use both an adoption and a twin design and study the effect of parents' education on their children's cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and health. Our results show that greater parental education increases ch...

The aim of this paper is to find out if the returns to immigrants’ schooling are lower than the returns to natives’ schooling. In addition the paper tries to establish whether immigrants who invest in different amounts of Swedish education also differ in their returns to schooling. For immigrants arriving in Sweden as adults, the returns to schooli...

Using longitudinal data, this paper investigates the penalty for excess weight in the Swedish labor market, distinguishing between the productivity and the discrimination hypotheses. We analyze employment, income, and sickness absence, using the latter as a direct measure of productivity. We find that excess weight women, but not men, experience a...

This paper contributes to earlier literature on heterogeneity in intergenerational mobility. A rich data set gives us a rather unique possibility to study different parts of both the cognitive ability and the parental background distributions. Since shared genetics between parents and off-spring is the premise, an approach to illuminate heterogenei...

This study reinvestigates the relationship between unemployment and crime. By being the first study to use long-term unemployment, it contributes unique findings. Moreover, with a Swedish panel consisting of 288 municipalities and annual data from 1997 to 2009, the relationship is investigated for the first time with aggregate post-2000 data. The r...

This study uses Swedish data to analyze why the SES-health gradient increases with ageing. Since different measures of SES and health capture different aspects, we use this information to explore the age increase in health inequality and to discriminate between three types of explanations, namely: i) age increase in the causal SES effect; ii) rever...

The aim of this paper is to examine if the returns to immigrants’ schooling are lower than the returns to natives’ schooling. In addition the paper tries to establish whether immigrants who invest in different amounts of Swedish education also differ in their returns to schooling. The results show that the difference in returns to schooling between...

This is the first study to use an achievement test score to analyze whether the income gap between second-generation immigrants and natives is caused by a skill gap rather than ethnic discrimination. Since, in principle, every male Swedish citizen takes the test when turning 18, we are able to bring more evidence to bear on the matter by estimating...

The purpose of this paper is to study whether youths brought up in ethnically segregated neighbourhoods dier in educational attainment from youths brought up in more auent neighbourhoods, after controlling for family characteristics. It is assumed that attending an ethnically segregated school is synonymous with growing up in an ethnically segregat...

Recent research has shown that there is a substantial skill difference in Sweden between natives and second-generation immigrants. The objective of this study is to find out whether there exists a relationship between ethnic school segregation and the individual's human capital. The variation in ethnic concentration rate between cohorts within a sc...

Using US survey data (NLSY) and Swedish register data the relationship between returns to schooling and ability is estimated separately for each country. A significant and positive relationship is found for Sweden, but not for US. Higher education in Sweden is more subsidized than in the US. Hence, with low credit constraints and a failing system o...