Viking Waldén

Here we test the feasibility of using decision markets to select studies for replication and provide evidence about the replicability of online experiments. Social scientists (n = 162) traded on the outcome of close replications of 41 systematically selected MTurk social science experiments published in PNAS 2015–2018, knowing that the 12 studies with the lowest and the 12 with the highest final market prices would be selected for replication, along with 2 randomly selected studies. The replication rate, based on the statistical significance indicator, was 83% for the top-12 and 33% for the bottom-12 group. Overall, 54% of the studies were successfully replicated, with replication effect size estimates averaging 45% of the original effect size estimates. The replication rate varied between 54% and 62% for alternative replication indicators. The observed replicability of MTurk experiments is comparable to that of previous systematic replication projects involving laboratory experiments.

This dissertation contains three self-contained chapters concerning the economics of rental and dental markets.

The first chapter, “The value of tenancy: Effects on housing conditions, labor supply and family formation,” studies the effect of receiving tenancy for a rent-controlled apartment in Stockholm, Sweden. Tenancy changes applicants’ housing conditions, making them move to neighborhoods with different socioeconomic characteristics. Receiving tenancy, however, affects neither labor supply nor family formation.

In “The roots of health inequality: Evidence from Swedish dental records and lottery data”, the authors analyze the causal mechanisms underlying health inequality. Inequality in oral health is partly explained by human capital, while inequality in dental care consumption is not. Using data from lotteries, the authors find that financial resources affects neither oral health nor dental care demand. Additionally, high- and low-income individuals exhibit similar responses to certain incentives in the dental insurance system.

“The effect of measurement error when studying oral health inequality” documents measurement error in Swedish oral health data. The author devices an adjusted measure of oral health to adjust for this error and finds it can have large consequences when studying oral health inequality between different income groups and people born inside and outside the Nordic region.