We identify the causal effect of lump-sum severance payments on non-employment duration in Norway by exploiting a discontinuity in eligibility at age 50. We find that a severance payment worth 1.2 months' earnings at the median lowers the fraction re-employed after a year by six percentage...

Using variation across geographical regions, a number of studies from the U.S. and other developed countries have found more deaths in economic upturns and less deaths in economic downturns. We use data from regions in Norway for 1977-2008 and find the same procyclical patterns. Using...

A link between lack of employment and poverty is often made implicitly, but can be difficult to enumerate in a satisfactory manner. We would therefore like to ask the question: to what extent does acquiring employment increase a poor household’s probability of exiting poverty? Register data...

This paper analyses the effects of so-called "green" tax reforms on a small, open economy producing an imperfect substitute for foreign goods, using an intertemporal general equilibrium model. The labour market is characterised by union wage setting, and a fixed exchange rate implies wage...

We analyse how inequality of disposable income evolved in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. We find that a standard measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - was surprisingly stable in all...

This paper examines the effect of taxes on the individuals' choices of educational direction, and thus on the economy's skill composition. A proportional labour income tax induces too many workers with high innate ability to choose an educational type with high consumption value and low effort...