In this paper we treat an individual’s health as a continuous variable, in contrast to the traditional literature on income insurance, where it is regularly treated as a binary variable. This is not a minor technical matter; in fact, a continuous treatment of an individual’s health sheds new...

This paper presents a new approach to the theory of the firm by identifying factor complementarities as central to the determination of the firm’s boundaries. The factor complementarities may take a variety of forms: technological and informational complementarities, as well as economies of...

A large literature on ex ante moral hazard in income insurance emphasizes that the individual can affect the probability of an income loss by choice of lifestyle and hence, the degree of risk-taking. The much smaller literature on moral hazard ex post mainly analyzes how a “moral hazard...

Does the average level of sickness absence in a neighborhood affect individual sickness absence through social interaction on the neighborhood level? To answer this question, we consider evidence of local benefit-dependency cultures. Well-known methodological problems in this type of analysis...

The new information and communication technology, ICT, induces households to take over tasks from firms and government agencies, using tools and systems provided by these very same organizations. The result is often joint production activities. We argue that the importance of ICT for the...

It has turned out to be difficult to adjust welfare-state arrangements to new circumstances. This paper emphasizes developments in the labor market and changes in the structure and preferences of the family. The former include changes in demography, productivity growth and international linkages...

We analyze the consequences for sickness absence of a selective softening of job security legislation for small firms in Sweden in 2001. According to our differences-in-difference estimates, aggregate absence in these firms fell by 0.2-0.3 days per year. This aggregate net figure hides important...

We analyze motivations for, and possible alternatives to, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). With regard to the former, we identify domestic policy failures and various cross-country spillover effects; with regard to the latter, we contrast an “economic-theory" perspective on optimal...

This paper analyzes economic-social interaction in China in connection with the country’s change of economic system. I define an economic system in terms of a multidimensional vector of broad institutional characteristics, and I emphasize that important features of the social development are...

The paper discusses a number of threats to the financial sustainability of social spending: increased internationalization of national economies, gradually higher relative costs of producing a number of human services, the “graying” of the population, slower productivity growth in the...