The purpose of this study was to assess the association between involuntary job loss and alcohol-attributable morbidity and mortality. Swedish-linked employee-employer data were used to identify all establishment closures during 1990–1999, as well as the employees who were laid off and a...

This paper studies the earnings and employment consequences of involuntary job loss in Sweden during the crisis years of the 1990s among assistant and auxiliary nurses. These two occupational groups were by far those in the public sector that experienced the largest number of job losses. While...

In this paper we investigate whether a relaxation in seniority rules (the ‘last-in-first-out’ principle) had any effect on firms’ employment behaviour. Seniority rules exist in several countries and, like Sweden, most European countries have a more lenient employment protection for firms...

This paper looks at welfare reforms in Italy and their effects on labour supply. I focus on social security reforms, which have taken place in the 1990s and on labour market reforms. Old age social security expenditure in Italy is high (14% of GDP) and the system has been very generous on early...

This paper analyzes the design of optimal unemployment insurance in a search equilibrium framework where search effort among the unemployed is not perfectly observable. We examine to what extent the optimal policy involves monitoring of search effort and benefit sanctions if observed search is...

In January 2003, the unemployment benefits in Finland were increased for workers with long employment histories. The average benefit increase was 15 per cent for the first 150 days of the unemployment spell. In this paper we evaluate the effect of the benefit increase on the duration of...

This paper investigates the impact of the unemployment insurance (UI) entrance requirement on employment duration in Sweden. I study employment spells in 1992, 1996, and 1998 to find behavioural adjustments in the timing of job separation. The results suggest that some adjustments have occured....

Previous research suggests that there are substantial interactions between the unemployment insurance (UI) and the sickness insurance (SI) in Sweden. Moral hazard arises in the interplay between these two social insurance systems, since by reporting sick an unemployed person can postpone the UI...

This paper examines the incentive effects caused by the interactions between unemployment insurance (UI) and sickness insurance (SI), two important components of Sweden’s social insurance system. There are two main topics of interest: how the sickness report rate and the length of the...

We examine the relationship between unemployment benefits and unemployment using Swedish regional data. To estimate the effect of an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment we exploit the ceiling on UI benefits. The benefit ceiling, coupled with the fact that there are regional...