Norwegian administrative data are used to evaluate the impact of a doubling of the threshold in the retirement earnings test. We find almost no impact on the extensive margin, but a positive effect on the intensive margin. This positive effect is uneven over the earnings distribution, and...

In order to estimate labour supply responses among older people we have employed a very simple model of retirement decisions that can be estimated on a single cross-section sample, and still be given a structural interpretation in terms of inter-temporal decisions. The model is estimated on...

We develop a forward-looking empirical concept of social exclusion based on the estimated transition probabilities from a random effects multinominal logit-model. Youths are considered socially excluded if they are currently outside school/work and have a low predicted probability of re-entering...

Labour market conditions at the time and place of potential entry into the labour market are shown to have a substantial and persistent impact on adult labour market performance. Birth cohorts that face particularly depressed labour markets when they graduate from primary- and/or secondary...

We use Norwegian register data from 1989 to 2002 to estimate the causal effects of programme participation on the transition rate from unemployment to employment,by means of a dependent risks hazard rate model. The separate roles of causality and unobserved heterogeneity are non-parametrically...

During the upswing in the Norwegian labour market after the peak of unemployment in the post-war period in the early 1990s, the inflow to unemployment fell by one fourth from October 1991 to October 1993. In contrast, the expected unemployment duration remained fairly constant, whether measured...

The decision by firms to offer an occupational pension is investigated with a unique linked employer-employee dataset, supplemented with detailed actuarial calculations of the cost to the firms of offering occupational pensions and constructed tax gains from pension contributions versus cash...

From a detailed study of the yearly wage bargaining rounds in Norway and Sweden, we construct time series of five complemetary coordination indices. Econometrics is used to evaluate the importance of the coordination indicators for our understanding of the changes in the rates of unemployment...

Based on a combined register database for Norwegian and Swedish unemployment spells, we use the ‘between-countries-variation’ in the unemployment insurance systems to identify causal effects. The elasticity of the job hazard rate with respect to the benefit replacement ratio is around -1.0...

Building on register data describing monthly labour market status for the whole Norwegian population 1992-95, we estimate grouped competing risk hazard rate models for transitions between employment, unemployment and non-participation. The models impose no parametric restrictions on either...