Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or...

Sweden experienced exeptionally fast economic growth during the century-long period 1870-1970. This illustrates that a decentralized market economy, highly open to international transactions, may be quite conductive to sustained productivity growth if the government fulfills its 'classical'...

This paper deals with economic incentives and welfare-state arrangements in OECD countries. This paper emphasises what may be called 'dynamic' incentive issues, i.e. incentive effects that envolve over time. The discussion also covers the interplay between incentives and social norms among...

How do we explain the poor employment performance in Western Europe since about the-1970s? This question is in fact twofold : What initiated the dramatic rise in employment, and waht mechanisms have made it continue for so long? My attemps to answer these questions from the basis for a...

In an analysis of the risk-sharing properties of different types of pension systems, we show that only a fixed-fee pay-as-you go (PAYG) pension systems can provide intergenerational risk sharing for living individuals. Under some circumstances, however, other PAYG pension systems can enhance the...

In conjunction with its tercentenary celebrations in 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) instituted a new award, 'The Central Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel' on the basis of an economic commitment by the bank in perpetuity. The award is given by the...

This paper considers the possibility of letting a pay-go pension system mimic a fully funded pension system. Generically, it turns out to be impossible to make a less than fully funded pension system actuarially fair on average. But a non-funded pay-go pension system can provide an actuarially...

What were the asserted complementarities between the welfare state and full-employment policies, and why do these complementarities look less convincing today?