This paper estimates the effects on earnings of “gap years” between high school and university enrollment. The effect is estimated by means of standard earnings functions augmented to account for gap years and a rich set of control variables using administrative Swedish data. We find that...

Swedish elementary school children stopped receiving written end of year report cards following a grading reform in 1982. Gradual implementation of the reform creates an opportunity to investigate the effects of being graded on adult educational attainments and earnings for children in the...

This paper investigates the role of skill depreciation in the relationship between work interruptions and subsequent wages. Using a unique longitudinal dataset, the Swedish part of the International Adult Literacy Survey, we are able to analyze changes in literacy skills for individuals as a...

Chay, Guryan and Mazumder (2009) found substantial racial convergence in AFQT and NAEP scores across cohorts born in the 1960's and early 1970's that was concentrated among blacks in the South. We demonstrated a close tracking between variation in the test score convergence across states and...

I examine how one central aspect of the family environment - sibling sex composition - affects women's gender conformity. Using Danish administrative data, I causally estimate the effect of having a second-born brother relative to a sister for first-born women. I show that women with a brother...

In part because of high youth unemployment, students' transition from school to work is an important policy and research topic. Public programs offering summer jobs or work while in high school as measures to smooth the transition is commonplace. The immediate effect of the programs on school...

This paper uses unique administrative data to expand the understanding of the role women's intermittency decisions play in the determination of their wages. We demonstrate that treating intermittency as exogenous significantly overstates its impact. The intermittency penalty also increases in...

This paper introduces a new IV strategy based on IVF (in vitro fertilization) induced fertility variation among childless women to estimate the causal effect of having children on their career. For this purpose, we use administrative data on IVF treated women in Denmark. Because observed chances...

We use quasi-random variation in graduation years during the onset of a very deep national recession to study the relationship between early labor market conditions and young females' family formation outcomes. A policy-pilot affecting the length of upper-secondary education in Swedish...

During the first 10 years in the Swedish labor market, male university graduates experience a faster wage growth than their female counterparts. This paper investigates the role of job mobility and upward occupational mobility in explaining the gender gap in early career wage growth. The...