Economies with low unemployment often have high disability rates. In Norway, the permanent disability insurance rolls outnumber registered unemployment by four to one. Based on administrative register data matched with firms' financial statements and closure data collected from bankruptcy...

The Knappschaft underlies Bismarck's sickness and accident insurance legislation (1883 and 1884), which in turn forms the basis of the German social-insurance system today and, indirectly, many social-insurance systems around the world. The Knappschaften were formed in the medieval period to...

Recent debates have suggested that taxation is very detrimental to labour force participation and employment. However, some countries - notably the Scandinavian - stand out as contradictions to this view since they have managed to sustain high labour force participation rate despite high tax...

Advances in information technology have improved the administrative feasibility of redistribution based on lifetime earnings recorded at the time of retirement. We study optimal lifetime income taxation and social insurance in an economy in which redistributive taxation and social insurance...

Moral hazard means that people with insurance may take greater risks because they know they do not bear the full consequences of their actions. This can occur with both private insurance and social insurance. Deductibles can be used to alleviate the problem. An interesting way to bring...

Several studies have documented that employer incentives, in form of experience rating, co-insurance or deductibles, could decrease the social insurance usage. Such employer incentives may though have unintended side effects, as it gives employers incentives to transfer the costs to their...

This paper investigates whether the partner's social insurance coverage affects spousal labor supply. Using a reform which increased the sickness insurance coverage for non-government workers, the spousal elasticity of sick days with respect to the partner's benefit is estimated to 0.4....