In June 1995, the Swedish parliament decided to cut the replacement rate in unemployment insurance from 80 percent to 75 percent, a change that took effect on January 1, 1996. This paper examines how this change affected job finding rates among unemployed insured individuals. To identify the...

Introductory economics tells us there are three factors of production: land, labour and capital. Unless a student of agricultural economics, land as a factor of production will never be mentioned again. Yet space for some industries is a significant input and that would seem to be true of...

Two general questions are posed in this paper: (a) In what ways do characteristics of the firm where the worker is employed have an influence on the worker's risk to become unemployed? (b) How do general and specific skills acquired in the firm affect the worker's unemployment risk? The...

This paper analyses recruitment practices to Samhall, a state-owned company that provides sheltered employment for individuals with severe work disabilities. Besides providing employment for disabled workers and rehabilitating them to employment outside Samhall, the company is expected to...

A number of earlier studies have examined whether extensive labour market programmes (ALMPs) contribute to upward wage pressure in the Swedish economy. Most studies on aggregate data have concluded that they actually do. In this paper we look at this issue using more recent data to check whether...

In a large sample of Swedish unemployed disabled workers, the workers participate in between zero and ten policy programmes during their unemployment spell. Clustering of programmes to about half of the sample is prominent. The number of programmes is modelled as a standard count data model, as...

We use the Swedish Job Applicant Database to empirically investigate whether being unemployed per se reduces the probability to get contacted by a firm. This database contains personal characteristics and preferences over the type of job the applicant wants to find. The data is submitted both by...

This paper estimates the macroeconomic effect of labor market programs on labor force participation. Labor market programs could counteract business-cycle variation in the participation rate that is due to the discouraged-worker effect, and they could prevent labor force outflow. An equation...

We study the derminants of plant closures i Swedish manufacturing using linked employer-employee data. From our theoretical framework we derive and empirically test hypothesis regarding the linkages between the probability of plant failure and: 1) industry-specific characteristics of production...

This paper proposes an application of standard evaluation techniques to obtain an early indication of the efficiency of a social program. An explicit distinction is made between participation and treatment since non-participants in many cases can find treatment outside of the program. By...