This paper studies the distributions of literacy skills, education, and employment of immigrants and natives in three host countries: Canada, the United States, and Norway. For natives, we uncover remarkably stable relations between literacy skills, schooling, and employment across countries....

A phenomenon observed in many labor markets is that the supply of labor appears to depend on business cycles. In other words, workers who are searching for work become "discouraged" under unfavorable business cycle conditions because they believe that their chances of finding an acceptable job...

Discouraged workers are those who have given up search due to (perceived) low chances of obtaining work. In this paper we first develop a model for the probability of being in the labor force as a function of the probability of getting an acceptable job offer. This model is based on standard...

The COVID-19 crisis has forced great societal changes, including forcing many to work remotely (work from home) in an effort to increase social distancing. The ability to work fromhome has long been considered a perk, but we have few estimates of how many are actually able to work from home....

We use a credible regression discontinuity design to estimate causal education effects. Pupils in the Swiss education system had to pass a centrally organized exam that classified them into different levels of secondary school, and that ultimately determined their educational degree. A major...

Cash-for care policies are contested in many contexts, as they represent an incentive for childrearing over work that may reduce labour market participation, especially among immigrant women. From 1 July 2017, immigrants (both the mother and the father) from outside the European Economic Area...

This paper considers statistical discrimination in rental markets, using a rich data set on rental contracts from Norway. We find that tenants born abroad pay a statistically significant and economically important premium for their dwelling units after controlling for a comprehensive set of...

Two districts of Oslo started to offer five-year-old children free preschool four hours a day. We analyze the effect of this intervention on the school performance of the children from immigrant families 10 years later (age 16). Our difference-in-difference approach takes advantage of the...

We examine how changes to regulations and the economic conditions have influenced gross immigration to Norway from, in principle, all countries in the world during 1969- 2010. In line with existing studies of immigration we find that economic factors were important for immigration to Norway....

The wellbeing of children of immigrant mothers is of great concern worldwide. In this study, we investigate the relationship between infant mortality and maternal country of origin and whether or not this relationship varies with the number of years since maternal migration. We use an extensive...