Research

The affordability and stability of housing are key determinants of economic well-being, but their effects on the academic success of university students remain underexplored. This paper investigates the causal effect of early access to affordable student housing on academic performance using a unique lottery-based allocation system in Sweden. The findings show that early access to student housing significantly improves students' academic performance, with grades increasing by 28\% of a standard deviation. The results suggest that housing stability allows students to focus more on their studies, reducing the need for employment and long commutes.

We study whether gender pay gaps reflect productivity differences in a rare setting where high-skilled men and women perform the same tasks under comparable conditions. Using administrative data from the Swedish Public Employment Service between 2003 and 2014, we exploit a rotation scheme that quasi-randomly assigns job seekers to caseworkers. We find no productivity differences: female and male caseworkers are equally effective at moving clients out of unemployment, and hourly wages are nearly identical. Yet women earn about 8 percent less per year, explained entirely by fewer contracted and actual hours. We also find suggestive evidence that male caseworkers are much more likely to be promoted than equally productive female colleagues. These results show that when productivity can be measured on a truly comparable basis, gender differences are minimal, but gaps in annual pay and career progression remain. Our findings contribute to the literature on gender inequality by highlighting the central role of hours—rather than productivity—in sustaining earnings gaps among high-skilled workers.

Childcare centers are often the first formal environment where children interact with peers. Despite their potential importance, the long-term impacts of early exposure to peers from different backgrounds remain underexplored. Leveraging comprehensive Danish register data, this study examines how higher exposure to non-Western peers in early childhood influences the educational and crime outcomes of native Danish children at age 16. To identify causal effects, we exploit the as-if random variation in peer composition across entry-year cohorts, within childcare centers. Our findings show that higher shares of both same-sex and opposite-sex non-Western peers have negative impacts on native children’s Danish and mathematics test scores.It also reduces the likelihood of choosing an academic track among native students. Additionally, our results do not support the hypothesis that these negative effects are driven by higher exposure to peers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. These effects become large and significant when the concentration of non-Western peers exceeds 40\% within the age group. We find no evidence of an impact on criminal outcomes.