We show that cyclical skill mismatch, defined as mismatch between the skills supplied by college graduates and skills demanded by hiring industries, is an important mechanism behind persistent career loss from graduating in recessions. Using Norwegian data, we find a strong countercyclical...

This paper uses administrative data to in detail document how the share of youths not in employment, education or training has evolved over time in the Scandinavian countries. We study both first- and second-generation immigrant youths as well as natives to explore whether the pattern differ...

We address the impact of education upon wage inequality by drawing on evidence from fifteen European countries, during a period ranging between 1980 and 1995. We focus on within-educational-levels wage inequality by estimating quantile regressions of Mincer equations and analysing the...

There is clear evidence that fairness plays a role in redistribution. Individuals want to compensate others for their misfortune, while they allow them to enjoy the fruits of their effort. Such fairness considerations have been introduced in political economy and optimal income tax models with a...

Massive cross-sectional evidence exists indicating that children of more educated parents outperform their schoolmates. However, evidence for causal interpretation of this association is weak. We examine a causal relationship using two approaches for identification within the same data: cousins...

We study the impact on children of increasing the time that the mother spends with her child in the first year by exploiting a reform that increased paid and unpaid maternity leave in Norway. The reform increased maternal leave on average by 4 months and family income was unaffected. The...

How do shocks to parental income drive adolescent human capital, including years of schooling, high school dropout, university attendance, IQ and health? A structural model decomposes household shocks into permanent and transitory components, then the effect of shocks at age 1-16 is estimated...

Using Norwegian individual register data of young workers, from the period 1986-2008, we analyse whether there are large and persistent negative relationships between unemployment and the risk of repeated unemployment and being out of labour force. A nearest-neighbour propensity score matching...

Children of immigrant parents constitute a growing share of school cohorts in many OECD countries, and their educational performance is vital for successful social and economic integration. This paper examines educational outcomes of first and second generation non- OECD immigrants in Norway. We...

This paper exploits discontinuous grade mixing rules in Norwegian junior high schools to estimate how classroom grade composition affects pupil achievement. Pupils in mixed grade classrooms are found to outperform pupils in single grade classrooms on high stake central exit tests and teacher set...