The recent Western European policy debate on unemployment has emphasized the benefits of active labor market programs. The authors analyze the effects on wage pressure and equilibrium employment in a union wage-setting framework. Programs are wage-reducing to the extent that they help maintain...

It is a common view that labor market programs reduce unemployment and restrain wages by increasing the competition for jobs. The Swedish case is often advanced as a blueprint to follow. This article questions the conventional wisdom on the Swedish labor-market policies. It finds empirical...

Membership in a monetary union implies stronger incentives for nominal wage flexibility in the form of wage indexation and shorter contract length than non-membership. This counteracts the stabilisation policy cost of giving up monetary independence. But more wage flexibility is only an...

The paper presents the Swedish institutional setting, documents basic stylised facts about fixed--term contracts, and discusses the causes of their increased prevalence. Open--ended and temporary employment exhibit strikingly different cyclical behaviour with temporary employment being more...

This article analyses 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 June 1995, the Swedish parliament decided to cut the replacement rate in unemployment insurance from 80% to 75%, a change that took effect on 1 January 1996. The paper exploits a quasi-experimental feature of the benefit reform to examine the effect on job finding. We compare the evolution of...

A key component of recent explanations for the growth in unemployme nt in Western Europe is a negative relation between wage rates and employment. This paper examines the evidence for such a relationship for Swedish manufacturing industry and also investigates the corresponding movements of...