We model self-control conflict as a stochastic struggle of an agent against a visceral influence, which impels the agent to act sub-optimally. The agent holds costly pre-commitment technology to avoid the conflict altogether and may decide whether to procure pre-commitment or to confront the...

After Wicksell in 1911 had published the second Swedish edition of his Lectures on Political Economy, a debate began in the Ekonomisk Tidskrift between Wicksell and his opponent Sven Brisman. The controversy was mainly about the concept of capital and the rate of interest, but the circumstances...

In this article we propose a model in which individuals experience habit formation in environmental quality. Further, a consumption good causes a negative external effect on the environment.The intertemporal utility of a benevolent social planner depends on consumption of two goods and the...

We analyze optimal social discount rates when people derive utility from relative consumption. We compare the social, private, and conventional Ramsey rates. Assuming a positive growth rate, we find that 1) the social discount rate exceeds the private discount rate if the importance of relative...

We study how gender, birth-order and number of siblings are related to stated time and risk preferences and real-life decisions. We use survey data covering about 2,300 individuals and find that time and risk preferences are significantly correlated among women but not among men. We also find...

This paper contributes to recent literature emphasizing the importance to identify the different channels along which taxable income responses occur. Using bunching techniques and exploiting a large first kink point where marginal tax rates increase by as much as 38 percentage points, we recover...

Sickness absence has risen over the past years in Norway. One explanation put forward is that a tougher labor market represents a health hazard, while a competing hypothesis predicts that loss of job security works as a disciplinary device. In this analysis we aim to trace a causal impact of...

In this paper we propose a tax and benefit reform to increase the working hours and to decrease the welfare participation of single mothers in Sweden. We have access to high-quality tax and income data, and use a detailed tax-benefit program to generate precise budget-sets. We formulate and...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a recent Swedish in-work tax credit reform where we pay particular attention to labor market exclusion; i.e. individuals in as well as outside the labor force are included in the analysis. To highlight the importance of the joint effects from the tax and...

Using registry data on every employed Norwegian woman giving birth to her first child during the period 1995–2008, we describe patterns of certified and paid sick leave before, during and after pregnancy. By following the same women over time, we can explore how observed sick leave patterns...