Björn Öckert took his Ph.D. at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) at Stockholm University in 2001, and has since then worked as a researcher at IFAU. His main areas of research are economics of education and labor economics, and he has worked on issues concerning returns to schooling, school resources, age at school start, intergenerational transmission of skills, reduced childcare fees, payroll tax reductions and contracting-out of public employment services. His research has been published in journals such as Labour Economics, Scandinavian Journal of Economics and Economics of Education Review.