Sanandaji arrived in Sweden in 1989 with his family as a 9-year-old and grew up in Norrköping and Ale Municipality. He earned a MSc in Economics and Business Administration from Stockholm School of Economics in 2003 and a PhD from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago in 2011. His PhD dissertation is entitled Essays in Entrepreneurship Policy. As of 2017, Sanandaji works as a researcher at the Institute for Economic and Business History Research at the Stockholm School of Economics. He has authored a number of scholarly articles on economics, with a focus on entrepreneurship and taxation. Sanandaji also has a blog where he publishes articles on government policy. He is especially critical of the far-rightSweden Democrats party. Sanandaji is a vocal critic of Sweden's policy on immigration of low-educated migrants from third world countries, but also of supporters of the anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats. He approaches the issue from an internal perspective, as both an immigrant himself and a former resident of various areas of social deprivation. According to Sanandaji, he has not conducted basic research on immigration but instead refers to research and statistics collected by other researchers., he describes his profession as economic research and writing on immigration as an unpaid hobby.
Author
Sanandaji has authored four books. His first two books were coauthored with Magnus Henrekson: Owner taxation and entrepreneurship - on tax theory and the Swedish policy debate and Institutional Entrepreneurship. He then coauthored SuperEntrepreneurs - and how your country can get them with his brother Nima Sanandaji. In February 2017, he self-published the book Massutmaning on Swedish immigration and integration policy. The book reached the top slot of many best-seller lists. In November 2017 his upcoming book on Swedish fiscal policy met its funding goal on Kickstarter. Sanandaji has also written several state reports on Swedish tax and entrepreneurship policy, including "Entrepreneurship conditions" for the "Experts Group on Public Finance" in the Swedish Ministry of Finance. He is a regular contributor to the National Review, and has authored articles in Swedish and American publications, including The American, Wall-Street Journal, Critical Review, The Independent Review and Axess magasin. Additionally, he has been profiled in Politico Europe, and interviewed by Expressen, Sveriges Radio, NRK, Dagbladet Information, The Economist, Al Jazeera, and The New York Post.
