We show that in the US, the UK, Italy and Sweden women whose first child is a boy are less likely to work in a typical week and work fewer hours than women with first-born girls. The puzzle is why women in these countries react in this way to the sex of their first child, which is chosen...

The Czech labour market performance in early 1990s has widely been regarded as a success story. In particular, the Czech unemployment rate has been one of the lowest in Europe. IN this paper, we provide a microperspective on the Czech labour market by using data from the Czech labour force...

We study the effects of performance bonuses in immigrant language training for adults. A Swedish policy pilot conducted in 2009–2010 gave a randomly assigned group of municipalities the right to grant substantial cash bonuses to recently arrived migrants. The results suggest substantial...

We study the effects of performance bonuses in immigrant language training for adults. A Swedish policy pilot conducted in 2009–2010 gave a randomly assigned group of municipalities the right to grant substantial cash bonuses to recently arrived migrants. The results suggest substantial...

Does limited access to credit explain some of the gap in schooling attainment between children from richer and poorer families? I present new evidence on this important question using data from two loan programs for college students in Chile. Both programs offer loans to students who score above...

We investigate the efficiency and distributional consequences of a corruptionfighting initiative in Romania targeting the endemic fraud in a high-stakes high school exit exam, which introduced CCTV monitoring of the exam and credible punishment threats. We find that punishment coupled with...

This study analyses whether the Swedish school choice reform, enacted in 1992, had different effects on students from different socio-economic backgrounds. We use detailed geographical data on students’ and schools’ locations to construct measures of the degree of potential choice. This...

Recent analyses of wage bargaining has emphasized the distinction between insiders and outsiders, yet one typically assumes that insiders and recently hired outsiders are paid the same wage. We consider a model where the starting wage for outsiders may be lower than the insider wage, but...

Using a large longitudinal data set, we study the effects of increased trade on earnings and mobility in the Swedish labor market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Earnings respond significantly to changes in industry sales, whether generated by domestic market forces or international trade:...

This paper is concerned with the labor market experience of Swedish youths during the 1980s and the 1990s. The first objective is to portray early economic attainment among young Swedes. The second objective of the paper is to examine the impact of labor market programs on youth employment. We...