Using a Difference-in-Differences approach, we evaluate the effects of a 10 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax introduced in 2002 in northern Sweden. We find no employment effects among firms existing both before and after the reform, whereas the average wage bill per employee...

Although there is a large literature on employment effects of earned income tax credits (EITCs) and unemployment benefits, less is known about wage effects. In our model, the impact is via the net (after-tax) replacement rate. Using a panel of individuals from Sweden, we find a positive...

We estimate the effects of conditioning benefits on program participation among older long-term unemployed workers. We exploit a Swedish reform which reduced UI duration from 90 to 60weeks for a group of older unemployed workers in a setting where workers who exhausted their benefits received...

In many countries welfare services that traditionally have been provided by the public sector are being contracted out to private providers. But are private contractors better at providing these services? We use a randomized experiment to empirically assess the effectiveness of contracting out...