Emma von Essen

This article uses longitudinal Swedish administrative data to provide the first population-level evidence on the prevalence and characteristics of transgender parents. In 2020, 10% of trans men (assigned female at birth) and 13% of trans women (assigned male at birth) were parents. Parenthood rates varied considerably by age, peaking at 41% for trans men aged 45–49 and 43% for trans women aged 50–64—about half the rates observed among cisgender peers. Paths to parenthood differed by gender: most trans women with children became parents before starting medical gender transition, whereas a majority of trans men with children initiated transition before having children. Compared to cisgender parents, transgender people entered family formation with weaker labor market attachment, and these gaps widened over time. However, transgender people with children were economically better off than transgender non-parents, suggesting a positive selection into parenthood. Taken together, our findings show that although a meaningful minority of transgender people form families, they remain a small and economically vulnerable group whose opportunities for parenthood are constrained by medical, legal, and social conditions.

We examine the prevalence of gender transitions in Sweden over time and document the sociodemographic characteristics of people transitioning in different periods. Using administrative data covering the transgender population from 1973 through 2020, we analyze two common events in a gender transition: the earliest diagnosis of gender incongruence and the change of legal gender. Our research note presents three main findings. First, the measured prevalence rates of diagnoses and legal gender changes are relatively low in all periods, although they have increased substantially since the early 2010s. Second, the recent increase in transition prevalence is most pronounced among people in early adulthood; in particular, young transgender men drive an increase in overall transition rates through 2018, followed by moderate declines in 2019 and 2020. Third, transgender men and women have substantially lower socioeconomic outcomes than cisgender men and women, regardless of the age at which they transition or the historical period. They are also considerably less likely to be in a legal union or reside with children. These findings highlight the continued economic and social vulnerability of the transgender population.

This paper analyzes a two-person, two-stage model of sequential exploration where both information and payoff externalities exist and tests the derived hypotheses in the laboratory. We theoretically show that, even when agents are self-interested and perfectly rational, the information externality induces an encouragement effect: a positive effect of first player exploration on the optimality of the second player exploring as well. When agents have other-regarding preferences and imperfectly optimize, the encouragement effect is strongest. The explorative nature of the game raises the expected surplus compared with a payoff equivalent public goods game. We empirically confirm our main theoretical predictions using a novel experimental paradigm. Our findings are relevant for motivating and managing groups and teams innovating not only for private but also and especially so, for public goods.This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.

Empirical studies show that discrimination by identity found in offline markets also prevails online. This paper reveal that in a competitive market, buyers that intend to discriminate exist but they are prevented from influencing the market outcome. To this end, we construct a field experiment on eBay, where half of the sellers disclose their names in their usernames while the other half do not. eBay, however, automatically discloses the seller’s names to the buyer after the auction. In the anonymous auctions, winning bidders thus learn the identity of the seller after the auction ends, and here we find buyers to discriminate against sellers with foreign-sounding names by leaving them feedback less often. However, there is no such discrimination in feedback provision when the seller name was known to the buyer before the auction. When bidders know the names of the sellers, the bidders with animus towards individuals with specific names can select out of auctions from these sellers, leaving winners that do not discriminate. One would expect that the auctions of for example sellers with foreign-sounding names would receive fewer bidders and thus lower auction prices. However, we observe no such differences: there are no statistically significant differences in the number of bids or auction prices received by sellers with foreign or domestic sounding names.

We look at gender differences among adolescents in Sweden in preferences for competition, altruism and risk. For competitiveness, we explore two different tasks that differ in associated stereotypes. We find no gender difference in competitiveness when comparing performance under competition to that without competition. We further find that boys and girls are equally likely to self-select into competition in a verbal task, but that boys are significantly more likely to choose to compete in a mathematical task. This gender gap diminishes and becomes non-significant when we control for actual performance, beliefs about relative performance, and risk preferences, or for beliefs only. Girls are also more altruistic and less risk taking than boys.

In this article we compare cooperation among Colombian and Swedish children aged 9–12. We illustrate the dynamics of the prisoner's dilemma in a new task that is easily understood by children and performed during a physical education class. We find no robust evidence of a difference in cooperation between Colombia and Sweden overall. However, Colombian girls cooperate less than Swedish girls. We also find indications that girls in Colombia are less cooperative than boys. Finally, there is also a tendency for children to be more cooperative with boys than with girls on average.