Assist. Prof. Björn Thor Arnarson, Ph.D.

The Impact of Globalization

Björn Thor Arnarson’s research interests are broadly within international economics and globalization. In his current research Mr. Arnarson is focusing on various topics related to globalization, such as cross-border commuting, firm ownership and trade networks, health and gender, migration, occupational specialization and market access.

The core of Mr. Arnarson’s current research agenda builds on several unique datasets from Denmark and Sweden that allows researchers to observe various cross-border links. Using this unique and high-quality dataset, Mr. Arnarson and his co-authors plan to address several novel questions on how globalization broadly impacts individuals, firms, and trade.

While at CES, Arnarson will collaborate with Martina Magli on a project focusing on specialization and service trade. The motivation of the project stems from the observed increased reliance on services and service trade. This trend can, for example, be seen in the Nordic countries, where services now account for around 60% of GDP, 75% of the workforce, and 30% of total exports. In this project Mr. Arnarson, M. Magli and A. Moxnes investigate the consequences of increased trade in intangible services on both firms and workers. While at CES, Mr. Arnarson will also present ongoing work on cross-border commuters between Sweden and Denmark.

Mr. Arnarson has published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Scientific Reports and Applied Economics Letters. His previous research has focused on within-firm spillovers in international trade (across products) as well as regional spillovers between manufacturing and the service sector. In addition, he has published papers on paternity leave policies in Iceland as well as how the timing of winter-school breaks impacted the initial spread of Covid-19.

Björn Thor Arnarson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen and affiliated with the Economic Policy Research Network in Copenhagen as well as the Centre for Oresund Region Studies at Lund University. Prior to his current position, Mr. Arnarson was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Copenhagen. He holds a PhD from Lund University, a MA from Boston University, and a BSc from the University of Iceland. He has also spent a year as a visiting student at the University of Oklahoma.