In Progress
My main line of research right now is my 2025–2030 ERC starting grant, with a first publication out in American Journal of Sociology and more underway.
Other projects I’m working on include:
The Paper Factory (with Nathan Wilmers)
Abstract
How can large language models (LLMs) contribute to social science research, and what parts of research remain stubbornly human? Building on existing LLM tools, we offer a multi-agent workflow capable of producing a full quantitative social science paper from an initial prompt. The workflow relies on researchers codifying their heuristics for doing data analysis, and we suggest some core design principles for researchers interested in building on this scaffolding. Using this case, we also examine what current LLM capabilities reveal about the organization of research. LLM agents can lower the cost of pursuing high-risk ideas, expand robustness and transparency, bring research to new audiences, and force scholars to articulate the heuristics that create valuable research. But they also pose challenges, both in terms of the quality of papers and in the adequacy of scientific institutions to adapt. Meeting these challenges will require not prohibition or denial, but new institutional norms that make use of these tools observable, auditable, and accountable.Teaching Teachers (with Danilo Kuzmanic and John Jerrim)
Abstract
Good teachers are role models. Using Chilean administrative data, we estimate how teacher value-added (VA) affects the VA of students who later become teachers. Exposure to a math teacher with 1 SD higher VA raises teacher VA in the next generation by 0.14 SD and student achievement one generation removed by 0.04 SD. Effects compound with longer exposure and appear driven by observable classroom practices. Under plausible assumptions, these spillovers raise cumulative returns to instructional quality by 28 percent after one generation and 39 percent in the long run.Women’s Earnings and Couples’ Economic Mobility (with Erik Liss)
Abstract
Upward economic mobility, the share of people outearning their parents, is a key indicator of living standards. How has the rise in women’s earnings affected upward mobility among heterosexual couples? The answer is complex and reflects several partly offsetting mechanisms. On the one hand, women’s earnings raise household incomes and thereby boost mobility. Yet this effect is temporary and fades once dual-earner households become common in both the parent and child generations. Beyond contributing to income growth, women’s earnings also influence upward mobility through changes in income dispersion, economic homogamy, and intergenerational persistence. We develop a tractable model that incorporates these components and allows us to decompose the contribution of women’s earnings to upward mobility, which we illustrate using trends in Sweden and the United States. Our findings demonstrate how, despite women's dramatic earnings strides, many families still struggle to outearn their parents.Elites and the Geography of Persistence (with Martin Hällsten and Martin Kolk)
Abstract
This article bridges elite studies and social stratification research by examining how advantage persists across five generations of kin in the Swedish population. Assembling a new full-population dataset from historical censuses and modern administrative data spanning 140 years, we analyze both vertical (ancestor-to-descendant) and horizontal (sibling and cousin) transmission of occupational status. In the general population, status transmission follows a pattern of geometric decline predicted by standard accounts of social reproduction. Among descendants of historical elites, by contrast, persistence is both substantially stronger, and less sensitive to kinship distance. These patterns are inconsistent with purely individualistic or genetic explanations but support a socially embedded account of “elite ecologies,” in which dense, place-based networks of families and institutions sustain advantage over time. These dynamics vary geographically and are closely tied to historical local conditions such as inequality, elite concentration, and land distribution measured in 1880.Birth Order and Elite Reproduction (with Carina Mood and Jan O. Jonsson)
Abstract
Research on birth order has largely interpreted sibling differences through models of resource dilution and compensation, which imply that sibling inequality should be strongest where resources are scarce and weakest where they are abundant. We argue instead that the clearest and most consequential birth order differences often emerge in elite settings. Elites face strong incentives to concentrate expectations, investments, and opportunities on particular children in order to preserve status across generations. Moreover, transitions into elite positions follow nonlinear dynamics that can amplify modest sibling differences in underlying characteristics. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that among children born into the top 1 percent, first-born children are substantially more likely than their later-born siblings to attain elite income positions in adulthood. The results suggest that understanding elite persistence requires attention not only to differences between families, but also to how families differentiate among their own children.Lasting Effects of Temporary School Closures (with Erik Liss)
Abstract
What are the long term consequences of missing school? We study this question using a 1989 teacher strike that forced schools in 44 Swedish municipalities to close over a period of 4–5 weeks. We implement a difference-in-differences design, comparing treated and untreated municipalities using various matching and weighting estimators. In the short run, students experienced a reduction in Grade Point Averages (GPA) of about 2 percentile points (0.05 SD). This effect is driven by boys from disadvantaged homes, and persists up to 5 years after the strike. In the long run, exposed students experienced a 1.8% reduction in earnings, and this effect is larger in disadvantaged groups.Demographic Decomposition of Social Change (with Ben Elbers and Jonathan Mellon)