Based on comprehensive administrative register data from Norway, we examine the determinants of sickness absence behavior; in terms of employee characteristics workplace characteristics, panel doctor characteristics, and economic conditions. The analysis is based on a novel concept of a worker's...

Based on Norwegian register data we show that having a lone parent in the terminal phase of life significantly affects the offspring's labor market activity. The employment propensity declines by around 1 percentage point among sons and 2 percentage points among daughters during the years just...

Does an income tax harm economic efficiency more the more progressive it is? Public economics provides a strong case for a definite "yes." But at least three forces may pull in the other direction. First, low-wage workers may on average have more elastic labour supply schedules than high-wage...

We examine the origins and outcome of entrepreneurship on the basis of exceptionally comprehensive Norwegian matched worker-firm-owner data. In contrast to most existing studies, our notion of entrepreneurship not only comprises self-employment, but also employment in partly self-owned limited...

After two decades of ratcheting unemployment in Europe, most economists agree that structural changes associated with higher equilibrium rates of unemployment have occurred. But the direction of causality is a matter of controversy: have the structural changes caused the long-lasting increases...

The way that unemployment duration affects employment prospects, is investigated using Norwegian micro transition data encompassing detailed accounts of 14 807 unemployed adults. A generalized non-proportional Weibull model is estimated, with two possible exits from the unemployment pool: a job...

In macroeconomics, unemployment hysteresis typically arises as a special case of an otherwise stationary model. Imposing hysteresis is often equivalent to imposing a random walk, i.e. a situation in which the permanent fraction of a shock is equal to unity. This paper develops a more general...