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This paper studies the labor market effects of non‐pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to combat the COVID‐19 pandemic. We focus on the Nordic countries which showed one of the highest variations in NPIs despite having similar community spread of COVID‐19 at the onset of the pandemic: While Denmark, Finland and Norway imposed strict measures ('lockdowns'), Sweden decided for much lighter restrictions. Empirically, we use novel administrative data on weekly new unemployment and furlough spells from all 56 regions of the Nordic countries to compare the labor market outcomes of Sweden with the ones of its neighbors. Our evidence suggests that the labor markets of all countries were severely hit by the pandemic, although Sweden performed slightly better than its neighbors. Specifically, we find the worsening of the Swedish labor market to occur around 2 to 3 weeks later than in the other Nordic countries, and that its cumulative sum of new unemployment and furlough spells remained significantly lower (about 20–25%) during the time period of our study (up to week 21 of 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a representative democracy, politicians should either implement policies that voters want or policies that politicians believe are in voters long-term interest, even if voters currently oppose them. The exact balance between these goals is debatable and politicians' policy engagement can tempt them to dismiss voters' preferences and resist information counter to their own policy position. In this paper, we discuss Sweden's generous migration policy and how it can serve as an example where politicians' policy engagement led them to a overly optimistic view of the implications of welcoming a large influx of refugees. Using detailed, repeated, survey data on members of parliament, we show that Swedish politicians favored a much more generous policy toward accepting refugees than voters for a long period of time. Neither observable factors nor expert knowledge can explain this difference between voters and politicians. A more likely explanations is wishful thinking and policy engagement from politicians that continued until political competition increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of media owners for the political bias of newspapers in Sweden, using an original dataset on outlets, consumer preferences, and ownership between January 2014 and April 2019. We construct an index of slant based on similarities in the language between newspapers and speeches given by members of parliament. Our results indicate that newspapers held by the same owner tend to offer the same mix of slant, rather than aligning their bias with consumer preferences in their area of circulation. Owners are even less inclined to differentiate the slant across outlets before elections, when the political returns to persuasion are high. We find no evidence that owners impose a one‐size‐fits‐all slant because product differentiation is too costly. In addition, we find suggestive evidence of owner‐independent bias induced by the writers of opinion articles. The Swedish context illustrates that supply‐driven slant cannot be ruled out in market‐based media systems if the ties between media and politics are strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]