In a broad psychological perspective, both economic incentives and social norms may be be regarded as giving rise to purposesful, or "rational" behavior. By this I simply mean that individuals act in accordaance with expected reward or punishment, even though the form these take differs...

The paper examines the implications of an important aspect of the ongoing reorganization of work - the move from occupational specialization toward multi-tasking - for centralized wage bargaining. The analysis shows how, on account of this reorganization, centralized bargaining becomes...

The modern welfare state and full-employment policies have common intellectual roots. From the very beginning, welfare-state arrangements and full-employment policies were regarded as strongly complementary.

How do we explain the poor employment performance in Western Europe since about the mid-1970s? This question is in fact twofold : what initiated the dramatic rise in unemployment, and what mechanisms have make it continue for so long. My attempts to answer these questions form the basis for a...

This paper analyzes the interplay between economic incentives and social norms in a public finance context. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population fraction adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is felt by the individual.