The common view that far-reaching labor market deregulation is the only remedy for high European unemployment is too simplistic. First, the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are an important cause of wage rigidity, going beyond the legal constraints emphasized in the political...

We report the results from a representative survey of human resource managers in 885 Swedish firms. We estimate that during the severe recession of the 1990s, only 1.1 percent of workers took a cut in regular nominal pay. We trace the lack of wage moderation to a combination of exogenous...

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent sharing and...

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent sharing and...

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? I argue that <p> common explanations based on rent seeking are incomplete. Unions, job <p> protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social <p> insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent seeking. In...</p></p></p>

Do incentives in small organizations differ from those in large ones? This paper uses a representative survey of compensation managers to shed light on the issues. I find that (i) small establishments rely less on pecuniary incentives, and have a significantly more hostile attitude towards...

It is a common observation that unions often try to compress the wage distribution among their members as compared with the productivity distribution. A troublesome aspect of standard theories of redistributive unions is the question why high-productivity workers choose to enter the union in the...

We use the exceptional variation in municipality-level unemployment in Sweden during the 1990s to identify the effect of unemployment on crime. Our findings are as follows: (i) There is a statistically and economically significant effect of general unemployment on the incidence of burglary, auto...