Comment by Nils Karlson – Nordic Economic Policy Review 2025: Wage formation and the Nordic model - Ratio

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Ratio Working Paper No. 392: Shortening the path — from the host organisation’s side: A demand-side study of internship matching for foreign-born academics

Stern, C. & Allstrin, S.

Publication year

2026

Published in

Ratio Working Paper Series.

Abstract

Many high-income labour markets combine persistent skills shortages with the underemployment of foreign-born academics, whose qualifications and experience tend to yield a lower return after migration. Work-based internships are a common policy response, expected to help migrants rebuild context-specific human capital, improve host-country language, and access the informal networks through which much hiring occurs. Yet the evidence base is almost entirely supply-side: it examines what internships do for interns, while the organisations that must agree to host them remain largely unstudied. What makes a placement work from the employer’s point of view is therefore poorly understood. Drawing on human capital theory, we address this gap through semi-structured interviews with managers and supervisors at 24 Swedish organisations that had hosted one or more foreign-born academic interns through the national programme Korta vägen (“the academic fast track”). Using inductive thematic analysis, we identify factors operating at three levels — individual, organisational, and institutional — that shape how well an intern’s human capital can be put to use. Education quality is less salient to hosts than the literature would predict; language matters chiefly as a vehicle for social integration; cultural friction is workable when expectations are made explicit; and institutional rules around credentials and licensing constrain placement quality in regulated professions. Hosts also report substantial, sometimes unanticipated, organisational gains. We argue that demand-side evidence requires human capital theory to be broadened to incorporate language, culture, and social capital if it is to explain matching.

Ratio Working Paper No. 391: From Demographic Dividend to Demographic Drag: Fertility Decline and Long-Run Economic Performance

Hansson, Å. & Lundberg, K.

Publication year

2026

Published in

Ratio Working Paper Series.

Abstract

Declining fertility is reshaping the demographic outlook of advanced economies, yet its long-run macroeconomic consequences remain poorly understood. Using a dynamic microsimulation model calibrated to the Swedish economy, this paper examines how alternative fertility and migration scenarios affect population dynamics, dependency ratios, GDP, GDP per capita, and economic growth between 2025 and 2100. We find that lower fertility initially raises GDP per capita through a temporary demographic dividend, but these gains are eventually offset by population ageing, a shrinking labour force, and slower economic growth. Under current fertility rates, GDP in 2100 is projected to be around 13 percent lower than under a stable demographic scenario, while lower fertility combined with lower migration reduces GDP to less than half that level. The findings highlight the importance of demographic structure for long-run economic prosperity and sustainable public finances.

How do learners approach vocabulary-learning in L3 French? A qualitative study including L1 Swedish-speaking learners

Arvidsson, K. & Lindqvist, C.

Publication year

2027

Published in

in preparation

Abstract