The paper examines the determinants of the division of labor within firms. It provides an explanation of the pervasive observed changes in work organization away from the traditional functional departments and toward multi-tasking and job rotation. Whereas the existing literature on the division...

The paper examines the determinants of the division of labor within firms. It provides an explanation of the pervasive observed changes in work organization away from the traditional functional departments and towards multi-tasking and job rotation.

Differential enforcement of employment protection by explicit design of the legislation, for example through exemptions for small firms, has been exploited in a growing body of research. However, little is known about the effects of differential enforcement that is not defined by the letter of...

Swedish minimum wages are not regulated by law, but subject to bargaining between employers and trade unions and form part of collective agreements. This paper provides an overview of the Swedish minimum wage system, its characteristics and effects on employment and wages, and also discusses the...

Minimum wages in Sweden are collectively agreed and differ by industry. Within agreements, the rates are also highly differentiated. Minimum wages are higher in Sweden than in any of the countries with statutory rates considered in this study. This is line with the view that minimum wages are...

Though more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the impacts of these reforms on women’s political leadership remain largely unknown. We exploit a quasi-experiment – a zipper quota imposed by the Swedish Social Democratic national party on municipal party groups – to examine...

Using linked employer-employee data from Sweden, a difference-in-difference approach, and 201 private equity buyouts undertaken between 1998 and 2004, we show that unemployment risk declines and labor income increases for employees in the wake of a private equity buyout. Unemployment risk...

Recent theoretical analysis suggests that a reduction in the cost of exporting increases the degree of assortative matching between workers and firms in export-oriented industries. Changes that reduce the cost of imports have an ambiguous impact on matching. We combine detailed Swedish matched...

No abstract.

Private equity buyouts have become a common element in the industrial development process. I survey the literature on the real economic effect of buyouts: employment, wages, productivity, and long-run investments. Employment tend to marginally fall after a buyout in most countries studied, with...