With ageing populations and a stronger reliance on individual financial decision-making concerning asset portfolios, retirement schemes, pensions and insurances, it becomes increasingly important to understand the determinants of cognitive ability among the elderly. To study effects of the...

This paper investigates the impact of a collective agreement stipulating a one shot increase in establishment-specific wage levels in a public-sector setting where wages otherwise are set according to individualized wage bargaining. The agreement stipulated that wages should increase in...

We study how workers' wages respond to TFP-driven innovations in firms' labor productivity. Using unique data with highly reliable firm-level output prices and quantities in the manufacturing sector in Sweden, we are able to derive measures of physical (as opposed to revenue) TFP to instrument...

This paper considers the effects of union-bargained minimum wages on transitions into and out of employment in the hotels and catering industry over the period 1979–99. This industry is characterised by a high fraction of unskilled labour input, high worker turnover and binding minimum wages....

Investigating the robustness of the skill-biased technical change hypothesis, this analysis incorporates two novel features. First, effective labor is modeled as the product of a quantity measure - number of employees with a given level of education - and a quality index, depending on, i.a.,...

A number of studies have shown that education reforms extending compulsory schooling reduce criminal behavior of those affected by the reform. We consider the effects of a major Swedish educational reform on crime by exploiting its staggered implementation across Sweden. We first show that the...

To study effects of out-of-school learning we use data on boarding home pupils who attended elementary public schools in the 1940’s. The out-of-school environment at the boarding homes could be considered being more learner friendly than the home environment on average: the pupils at the...

The modernisation of Swedish households during the twentieth century prompted a considerable productivity growth in household production, which reduced the time input for a fixed volume of routine household work by about 35 per cent 1920-1990. Much of that time was gradually transferred to the...

This study examines how workplace size relates to transitions in- and out-of sickness absence. Overall, the study finds important differences in the long-term sickness absence behavior of individuals working in small and large workplaces. In particular, the results show that the sickness spells...

In 2007, the Swedish employer-paid payroll tax was cut on a large scale for young workers, substantially reducing labor costs for this group. We estimate a small impact, both on employment and on wages, implying a labor demand elasticity for young workers at around -0.31. Since the tax reduction...