When estimating the extent of e.g. excess use of public benefits one traditionally uses direct monitoring. Such direct estimates are afflicted with an intrinsic negative bias since you only count what you find. This paper presents and assesses an alternative intuitive, yet relatively unexplored,...

In 1998 the Swedish national sickness insurance policy changed to allow additional compensation from e.g. collective agreements after the 90th day of absence without a reduction of the public sickness benefit. We estimate the effects of this policy change on the duration of sickness absence for...

In this paper, we examine the performance of the market mechanism by focusing on whether no one, in the "long-run", can be left behind with technological innovation in the economy. We show that the market mechanism with technological innovation unavoidably leaves some individuals behind. We...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the critical arguments made by Burmeis- ter, Samuelson, and others, with respect to Sraffa (1960). Sraffa did not address these arguments, but they are relevant from the viewpoint of modern economic theories. In his arguments about the standard commodity,...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the critical arguments made by Burmeister, Samuelson, and others, with respect to Sraffa (1960). In his arguments about the standard commodity, Sraffa assumed that a change in income distribution has no effect on the output level and choice of techniques,...

We test if social work norms are important for work absence due to self-perceived sick-ness. To this end, we use a randomized social experiment designed to estimate the effect of monitoring on work absence. The treated were exposed to less monitoring of their eligibility to use sickness...

The paper examines whether a worker's sick absence behaviour influences the risk of becoming unemployed. Swedish panel data are used to estimate the relationship between the incidence and duration of sick leave and subsequent unemployment. The results indicate that an increase in the number of...

The paper exploits a unique social experiment carried out in 1988 in Sweden to identify the effect of monitoring on sickness absence. The treatment consists of postponing the first formal point of monitoring during a sickness absence spell, a requirement for a doctor’s certificate, from day...

This paper analyzes the persistency of the unequal exchange of labor (UE) in international trade. An intertemporal model of a world economy is defined with a leisure preference and no discount factor. Every incompletely specialized free trade equilibrium is characterized as having non-persistent...

This paper presents an intertemporal model of pre-industrial economies defined with leisure preference to study the condition of the emergence and persistence of exploitation as unequal exchange of labor. We show that pure workers are exploited in any finite periods if there is positive real...