There is a heated debate in many European countries about a move towards a welfare system that increases the incentives for lone mothers to move off welfare and into work. We analyze the consequences of a major Norwegian workfare reform of the generous welfare system for lone mothers. Our...

There is plenty of evidence for market failures that motivate government intervention for innovation in general and research and development (R&D) in particular. R&D subsidies are a policy tool of major importance - both in theory and practice. The empirical evidence for the effectiveness of R&D...

Paid maternity leave has gained greater salience in the past few decades as mothers have increasingly entered the workforce. Indeed, the median number of weeks of paid leave to mothers among OECD countries was 14 in 1980, but had risen to 42 by 2011. We assess the case for paid maternity leave,...

This paper studies the relationship between retirement and mortality, using a unique administrative data set covering the full population of Norway. We make use of a series of retirement policy changes in Norway, which reduced the retirement age for a group of workers but not for others. By...