Much research has highlighted the significance of neighborhood effects on individual-level choices and outcomes. But it has proven difficult to disentangle the influence of those that an individual shares a residential space with from that of other peers, such as work colleagues and family members. Neighbors, work colleagues, and family members constitute different sources of information. The decision to accept or refuse a vaccine is intensely personal and involves the processing of information about phenomena likely to be unfamiliar to most individuals. To examine the information effect of different peer groups we use microlevel data on COVID-19 vaccination in Sweden. We investigate the extent to which an individual's decision not to get vaccinated is influenced by the presence of other unvaccinated individuals in their household, workplace, or residential neighborhood. Our findings reveal that workplace peers tend to be most strongly connected to the decision not to get vaccinated. We also find that the role of neighborhood peers tends to be overestimated when we do not control for peers at home and at work.

We employ sequence analysis to explore the heterogenous labor market paths of entrepreneurial Iraqi immigrants in Sweden, a group of forced migrants whom we follow from their year of immigration (2006-2009) to 2019. Using both individual and geographic characteristics, our main objective is to analyze how neighborhood characteristics are associated with individuals' likelihood of following self-sufficient labor market paths, leading to an income large enough to support themselves. The results show that residing among self-employed co-ethnics is positively related to the engagement in own self-employment, while we find a negative relationship between neighborhood poverty and the likelihood of pursuing a labor market path leading to self-sufficiency. A novel finding is that having self-employed Iraqi neighbors is primarily associated with necessity entrepreneurs, who experience relatively long periods of non-self-sufficiency and limited participation in the regular labor market. As expected, the results show that highly educated and skilled individuals are more likely to follow self-sufficient labor market paths. Our findings thus encourage efforts to mitigate socioeconomic disadvantages, support necessity entrepreneurs, and enhance education levels in disadvantaged groups.

This paper investigates neighbourhood characteristics related to an individual’s likelihood of getting the first COVID-19 vaccination and implementing official recommendations for the three-shot vaccination regime. We use full population-geocoded microdata for Sweden to measure important individual-level attributes and the marginalisation of their residential communities in terms of ethnicity, education and income. The findings show that the likelihood of getting vaccinated and obtaining all three recommended vaccine doses decrease for individuals residing in neighbourhoods with larger shares of marginalised residents. The effects also appear to be more pronounced if the individual themself belongs to a marginalised group.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a debate about whether marginalized communities suffered the disproportionate brunt of the pandemic's mortality. Empirical studies addressing this question typically suffer from statistical uncertainties and potential biases associated with uneven and incomplete reporting. We use geo-coded micro-level data for the entire population of Sweden to analyze how local neighborhood characteristics affect the likelihood of dying with COVID-19 at individual level, given the individual's overall risk of death. We control for several individual and regional characteristics to compare the results in specific communities to overall death patterns in Sweden during 2020. When accounting for the probability to die of any cause, we find that individuals residing in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods were not more likely to die with COVID-19 than individuals residing elsewhere. Importantly, we do find that individuals show a generally higher probability of death in these neighborhoods. Nevertheless, ethnicity is an important explanatory factor for COVID-19 deaths for foreign-born individuals, especially from East Africa, who are more likely to pass away regardless of residential neighborhood.

This paper explores the quality of life of non-self-sufficient immigrants in Sweden, focusing on their residential patterns while controlling for individual characteristics. We find large differences in both individual and locational attributes across income levels and ethnic backgrounds, illustrating that the status of ‘immigrant’ is far from being a homogenous group. The results show that non-self-sufficient individuals, especially those from Africa and the Middle East, may face limitations in their life satisfaction as these groups are most likely to reside in socioeconomically weak neighborhoods. Additionally, the results show that the motivation for residential choices varies across ethnic backgrounds. For example, ethnicity rather than income level determines the neighborhood patterns of African immigrants, while non-self-sufficiency is the major determinant for Nordic immigrants residing in poor, ethnic neighborhoods. We thus argue that the location of residence and differences across ethnic backgrounds deserve more attention in research and policy discussions on quality-of-life issues.

Although the process of integrating immigrants into the labor market unfolds over many years, it is often modeled as outcomes (e.g. employment) at specific points in time. We contribute to the literature by providing empirical evidence of the sequence of events leading to active labor market participation of East African and EU15 immigrants to Sweden, whom we follow for up to 28 years. By combining the method of sequence analysis with binomial logit estimation, we can explain why individuals are sorted into different representative labor market sequences. A further contribution is that along the usual initial conditions (individual and geographic), we employ longitudinal micro data to find (1) representative sequences of movements between various types of neighborhoods and (2) an empirical estimate of individual ability, which turns out to be a strong predictor for immigrants entering an active labor market trajectory. Our results show that East Africans tend to reside in neighborhoods with a high degree of socioeconomic and ethnic segregation. Despite this, their labor market activity seems to be less influenced by neighborhood trajectories than EU15 immigrants. The labor market activity of EU15 immigrants and female East African immigrants is positively related to residing in less ethnically segregated and socioeconomically stronger neighborhoods. Our results are relevant to policy development since they point to the importance of the initial location of immigrants and their subsequent residential mobility.

In this study, we use unique purpose-built survey data to show that small food firms are more innovative when externally engaged. To capture this, we apply a broad classification of innovative activities, including new products, processes, markets, organization, and distribution channels, and examine them against types of external interactions. The analysis, an ordered logit estimation, controls for heterogeneity across firms as well as geographic conditions. The results demonstrate a positive relationship between external interaction and firm innovation, though there are differences across types of external engagement and innovation activities. Product innovation benefits from knowledge from extra-regional firms, while several of the other forms of innovation show a positive relationship with support from regional and municipality boards. Additionally, firm collaboration regarding transports and sales enhances most types of innovation, but there are few relationships of benefit with research-intensive organizations. We conclude that, to be effective, innovation strategies of both the firms themselves and policymakers need to consider local context, access to intra- and extra-regional knowledge sources, and what types of innovation activities the firms are engaged in.

In this study of Swedish farms from 2007 to 2016, we estimate the effects of investment support from the Common Agricultural Policy on indicators of farm performance, focusing on long-term effects. To isolate the impact and alleviate problems of selection bias, we employ a counterfactual empirical design using Coarsened Exact Matching and dynamic panel fixed-effects estimations. The average treatment effect on the treated estimates show a positive and significant long-term improvement of farm performance with regard to productivity and turnover. However, the results indicate significant time lags between investments and accumulated observable effects, as we find most short-term effects of the subsidy to be insignificant.

Building on the neo-endogenous rural development model and the resource-based view of the firm, this paper investigates the role of place-based amenities for new firm formation. Empirically, we employ a full-population dataset encompassing new firms in Sweden from 2009 to 2016, combined with geocoded datasets with the spatial distribution of nature- and culture-based amenities. The results show that local amenities are indeed important factors in determining the rate of new firm formation. Estimating the model across urban and rural neighborhoods show that amenities are relatively more important in explaining new firm formation in rural areas as compared to urban. As such, our study contributes to the literature on diversification of the economies of rural areas by pointing at the important role that place-based amenities may play for an entrepreneurially-driven development of less developed and/or rural areas.

This chapter aims to contribute to the research on innovation, entrepreneurship and their determinants by investigating these issues in two Swedish regions - Jonkoping County and Jamtland. Jonkoping County is representative for a rural and peri-urban area, with a central location in Sweden. Firm innovativeness is an important dimension of entrepreneurship and is regarded as playing a vital role for firm growth, including for firms located in rural areas. The ability of firms to renew themselves is becoming increasingly important from the perspective of firm survival and growth. The county has a strong entrepreneurial and small firm tradition in the manufacturing sector. The town of Gnosjo is famous for its “entrepreneurial spirit” and flexible small firms that both compete and cooperate. The county has a strong entrepreneurial and small firm tradition in manufacturing. Interesting regional differences emerge when looking at the factors that can facilitate innovation, i.e. firm size and human capital characteristics.