Bio

Joacim is Program Director and Research Fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and Associate Professor (Docent) at Lund University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and has been a Fulbright Scholar at New York University.

He currently works on bringing Swedish registry data to the research frontier in labor and finance. A central theme is the allocation of executives and workers across firms or into entrepreneurship. He also studies how ownership changes in firms affect workers, and he has previously done work on optimal regulation of IT, telecom, and media companies. His research is detailed in over 30 publications and working papers and has been featured in major national and international newspapers. It has over 1000 cites in Google Scholar and ranks top decile by all-time downloads worldwide in SSRN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Selected Research

Keloharju, M., S. Knüpfer, and J. Tåg. 2019. “What Prevents Women from Reaching the Top?” Revise and Resubmit at Management Science.

• We show that women are about one-half as likely to be large-company CEOs and about one-third less likely to be high earners than men. A wide range of observables do not explain the lack of women in top executive positions. Instead, slow career progression in the five years after the first childbirth explains most of the female disadvantage.
• Media coverage: Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Samhälle, Expressen, HBS Working Knowledge, Helsingin Sanomat, Huvudstadsbladet, Iltalehti, Nordic Business Report, Svenska Dagbladet, Talouselämä, Yle.

Colonnelli, E, J. Tåg, Webb, M, and S. Wolter. 2018. A Cross-Country Comparison of Dynamics in the Large Firm Wage Premium.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 108: 323–27.

• We provide stylized facts on the existence and dynamics of the large firm wage premium for Brazil, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. The large firm premium exists in all these countries, but we find no clear evidence of common cross-country industry trends in the premium.

Olsson, M. and J. Tåg. 2017. “Private Equity, Layoffs, and Job Polarization.” Journal of Labor Economics 35: 697–754.

• We argue that ownership change is one driver of job polarization by showing that private equity buyouts of low productive firms are coupled with productivity enhancing investments in automation and offshoring. As a result, workers performing routine or offshorable job tasks in these firms tend to get laid off.
• Media coverage: Affärsvärlden, Dagens Industri, Dagens Nyheter, Sveriges Radio, Svenska Dagbladet.

Tåg, J., T. Åstebro, and P. Thompson. 2016. “Hierarchies and Entrepreneurship.” European Economic Review 89:129–147.

• We join the entrepreneuship and organizational economics literatures by establishing a correlation between the hierarchical structure of a firm and the likelihood of business creation among its former employees. Employees in firms with more layers are less likely to enter entrepreneurship. Part of the effect could be to be due to preference sorting by employees, and part due to employees in firms with fewer layers having a broader range of skills. One test showing that the probability of entrepreneurship increases with their prior rank in an organization is consistent with ability sorting and inconsistent with preference sorting.

News and Events

• 2019-12-19 Appointed Associate Professor/Docent at Lund University
• 2020-03-26 Presentation at the IFN Firms and Labor Workshop in Stockholm
• 2020-06-12 Member of the Scientific Committee of the 2020 CSEF and RCFS Conference on Labor, Finance, and Inequality in Capri
• 2020-08-17 Organizing the first European workshop of the Labor and Finance Group at IFN. More information here.
• 2020-09-02 Seminar at NHH in Bergen