We investigate the impact of plant downsizing on disability pension utilization in Norway. Plant downsizing substantially increases the disability entry rate of workers in affected plants. Workers originally employed in plants that downsized by more than 60% between 1995 and 2000 were 24% more...

This article analyzes the impact of stochastic skill-biased technological change on earnings inequality in a general equilibrium OLG model. Wage dispersion is determined by the heterogeneity of skills by allowing for productivity differences due to education, ability, and age. The model performs...

In this paper we argue that government spending played a significant role in stimulating the wave of innovation that hit the U.S. economy in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, as well as the simultaneous increase in inequality and in education attainments. Since the late 1970s U.S. policymakers...

We present estimates of the private and fiscal returns to schooling in 14 European Union countries. Estimates of the private returns to post-compulsory formal education take into account the effects of schooling on wages and employment probabilities and allow for academic failure rates, the...

We contribute to the literature on well-being and comparisons by appealing to new Danish data dividing the country up into around 9,000 small neighbourhoods. Administrative data provides us with the income of every person in each of these neighbourhoods. This income information is matched to...

This paper documents the existence and main patterns of inter-industry wage differentials across a large number of industries for eight EU countries at two points in time (in general 1995 and 2002) and explores possible explanations for these patterns. The analysis uses the European Structure of...

This paper reports the results of experiments designed to test the theory of the optimal composition of prizes in contests. In the aggregate the behavior of subjects is consistent with that predicted by the theory, but we find that such aggregate results mask an unexpected compositional effect...