Robert Östling

Erik Angners bok How Economics Can Save the World: Simple Ideas to Solve Our Biggest Problems är något så ovanligt som en hyllning till nationalekonomin skriven av en professor i filosofi. När jag läser boken blir jag å min disciplins vägnar smickrad, men också lite besvärad. Känslan som infinner sig vid läsningen påminner om att läsa ett mäklarprospekt om sitt eget hem. Lite som bilden på den fantastiska utsikten mot sjön som i själva verket bara är en sjöglimt som syns vintertid från andra våningen.

År 2021 tilldelades professorerna Erik Lindqvist och Robert Östling Assar Lindbeck-medaljen. Medaljen delas ut vartannat år av Nationalekonomiska Föreningen, genom stiftelsen Assar Lindbeck-medaljen, till i Sverige verksamma forskare under 45 år som gett ett signifikant bidrag till ekonomiskt tänkande och ekonomisk kunskap. Den här artikeln baseras på pristagarnas föreläsning som hölls i samband med att medaljen delades ut under Nationella konferensen i nationalekonomi den 11 november 2022. Artikeln sammanfattar ett antal uppmärksammade studier om hur plötslig rikedom, i form av lotterivinster, påverkar exempelvis individers arbetskraftsutbud, hälsa och upplevda välbefinnande.

Players often fail to coordinate on the efficient equilibrium in laboratory weak-link coordination games. In this paper, we investigate whether such coordination failures can be mitigated by increasing the number of rounds or altering per-period stakes. We find that neither time horizon nor stakes affect equilibrium selection. In contrast to previous findings, players are not more likely to play above the previous period's minimum choice when the horizon is longer or per-period stakes lower. We also investigate which socio-demographic factors and behavioral traits correlate most strongly with play both in the first round and in subsequent rounds. Cognitive ability as measured by a cognitive reflection test stands out as the characteristic that is most strongly associated with efficient coordination.

The purpose of this paper is to simplify the standard framework integrating epidemiological and economic concerns. We present a model where a social planner can influence the spread-intensity of an infection wave through a single parameter. The spread-intensity affects both economic activity and population health. We study the planner's optimal trade-off between upholding economic activity and preserving population health and show analytically that the solution has a natural interpretation with intuitive comparative statics

We estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation using administrative data on Swedish lottery players. A $150,000 windfall gain increases stock ownership probability among pre-lottery non-participants by 12 percentage points, while pre-lottery stock holders are unaffected. The effect is immediate, seemingly permanent and heterogeneous in intuitive ways. Standard lifecycle models predict wealth effects far too large to match our causal estimates under common calibrations. Additional analyses suggest a limited role for explanations such as procrastination or real-estate investment. Overall, results suggest that “nonstandard” beliefs or preferences contribute to the nonparticipation of households across many demographic groups.

We surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players about their psychological well-being 522 years after a major lottery event and analysed the data following pre-registered procedures. Relative to matched controls, large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence of dissipating over time. The estimated treatment effects on happiness and mental health are significantly smaller. Follow-up analyses of domain-specific aspects of life satisfaction implicate financial life satisfaction as an important mediator for the long-run increase in overall life satisfaction.

Importance: Poor health and unhealthy lifestyles are substantially more prevalent among individuals with low income than among individuals with high income, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Objective: To evaluate whether changes to unearned wealth from lotteries are associated with long-term health behaviors and overall health. Design, Setting, and Participants: In this quasi-experimental cohort study, 4820 participants (aged 18-70 years at the time of winning) in 3 Swedish lotteries were surveyed from September 1, 2016, to November 11, 2016, between 5 and 22 years after a lottery event. Outcomes of participants in the same lottery who were randomly assigned prizes of different magnitudes by the lotteries but were ex ante identical in terms of their probability of winning different prizes were compared. Data were analyzed from December 22, 2016, to November 21, 2019. Exposures: Lottery prizes ranged from $0 for nonwinning players to $1.6 million. Main Outcomes and Measures: Four lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and a healthy diet index) and 2 measures of overall health (subjective health and an index of total health derived from responses to questions about 35 health conditions). Results: The survey was returned by 3344 of 4820 individuals (69%; 1722 [51.5%] male), which corresponded to 3362 observations. The mean (SD) age was 48 (11.8) years in the year of the lottery win and 60 (11.0) years at the time of the survey. There were no statistically significant associations between prize amount won and any of the 6 long-term health outcomes. Estimated associations expressed in SD units per $100 000 won were as follows: smoking (-0.006, 95% CI, -0.038 to 0.026); alcohol consumption (0.003, 95% CI, -0.027 to 0.033); physical activity (0.001, 95% CI, -0.029 to 0.032); dietary quality (-0.007, 95% CI, -0.040 to 0.026); subjective health (0.013, 95% CI, -0.017 to 0.043); and index of total health (-0.003, 95% CI, -0.033 to 0.027). Conclusions and Relevance: In this study of Swedish lottery players, unearned wealth from random lottery prize winnings was not associated with subsequent healthy lifestyle factors or overall health. The findings suggest that large, random transfers of unearned wealth are unlikely to be associated with large, long-term changes in health habits or overall health.

We study a simple model of similarity-based global cumulative imitation in symmetric games with large and ordered strategy sets and a salient winning player. We show that the learning model explains behavior well in both field and laboratory data from one such “winner-takes-all” game: the lowest unique positive integer game in which the player that chose the lowest number not chosen by anyone else wins a fixed prize. We corroborate this finding in three other winner-takes-all games and discuss under what conditions the model may be applicable beyond this class of games. Theoretically, we show that global cumulative imitation without similarity weighting results in a version of the replicator dynamic in winner-takes-all games.

In this article, Robert Östling argues that the polarizing debate over the choice of saving lives or saving jobs may be misleading. He describes different options for policymakers and how we can understand why countries have chosen alternative strategies. The conclusion is that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how economic and epidemiological aspects are more intertwined than previously thought.