Vilket EU vill vi ha?

Working Paper No. 383 Insider activism in the forest industry: An empirical public choice analysis

Working paperPublication

Jonas Grafström & Nils Karlson

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Publication year

2025

Published in

Ratio Working Paper Series

Abstract

Insider activism—where bureaucrats use discretionary power to advance own ideological goals—has significant implications for regulatory stability and property rights security. Using the Swedish forestry industry as a case study, the purpose of this study is to investigate if insider activism affects the Swedish forestry sector and how such possible regulatory uncertainty influences economic decision-making. Assembled survey data suggest that forest owners perceive regulatory enforcement as unpredictable, leading to defensive actions such as premature harvesting to preempt restrictive future regulations. To explain these patterns, we apply public choice theory and a game-theoretic approach, demonstrating how bureaucratic drift, regulatory ratcheting, and time-inconsistency problems contribute to persistent distortions in forestry policies. Policy wise, the findings emphasize the need for judicial review, regulatory impact assessments, and clearer legislative mandates to reduce enforcement uncertainty and improve institutional trust. This research advances discussions on bureaucratic incentives, regulatory capture, and legal certainty in environmental policy.

City size, employer concentration, and wage income inequality

Working paperPublication

Halvarsson, D., & Korpi, M.

Publication year

2025

Published in

Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the urban wage premium and employer concentration using Swedish full population employer-employee data. Departing from an AKM modeling framework to distinguish worker from firm specific heterogeneity – a measure of rent-sharing – we then measure the urban wage premium using differences in the estimated firm fixed effects at the level of local industries, nested within local labor markets. Our results suggest that labor market employer concentration, as calculated using the Hirschman-Herfindahl index and a leave-one-out instrumental variable design, can account for a significant share of the estimated urban wage premium (UWP). Addressing city-level wage income inequality by applying our model to different segments of the local labor market income distribution, we find that while the UWP pertains to all income segments, it is largest for top-income levels (above the 90th percentile), and within this segment employer concentration also has the largest explanatory power. Thus, while being an important explanatory factor for all percentiles of the local income distribution, a relatively lower employer concentration within larger cities, and vice versa, higher concentration within smaller cities, primarily help explain the variance of top wages within these cities/labor markets.

Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism

BookPublication

Karlson, N. (2024). Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism. Palgrave Macmillan Cham.

Publication year

2024

Published in

Palgrave Macmillan Cham.

Abstract

How can we fight back against the populist threat to liberty, free markets, and the open society?

This open access book by Nils Karlson explores the strategies used by left- and right-wing populists to make populism intelligible, recognizable, and contestable. Karlson argues that to fight back requires the revival of liberalism itself by defending and developing the liberal institutions, the liberal spirit, liberal narratives, and liberal statecraft. The book presents a synthesized explanatory model for how populists promote autocratization through the deliberate polarization of society and traces the ideational roots of the core populist ideas that form a collectivistic identity politics. Written within the tradition of political theory and institutional economics, this book uses a wide variety of sources, including results and analyses from social psychology, ethics, law, and history.

The book is open source and can be downloaded through the link below.

Vilket EU vill vi ha?

VILKET EU VILL VI HA?

Abstract

Vilket EU vill vi ha?

VILKET EU VILL VI HA?

Abstract

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Working Paper No. 383 Insider activism in the forest industry: An empirical public choice analysis

City size, employer concentration, and wage income inequality

Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism