The paper analyzes the relationship between career path characteristics of civil servants and their career success. Following a description of the institutional setting and some qualitative evidence on typical paths to the top, we use data that follows the careers of all Swedish civil servants...

With ageing populations and a stronger reliance on individual financial decision-making concerning asset portfolios, retirement schemes, pensions and insurances, it becomes increasingly important to understand the determinants of cognitive ability among the elderly. To study effects of the...

During the last decade several empirical studies have stressed the importance of norms and social interactions for explaining sickness absence behavior. In this context public discussions about the intentions of the insurance, and of the rights and duties of the receivers, may be important for...

We study the intergenerational transmission of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities between parents and sons using population-wide enlistment data. Conscripts are eva-luated at the same age and with comparable methods across cohorts, and we correct for measurement error bias in fathers’...

Abadie and Imbens (2008, Econometrica) showed that classical bootstrap schemes fail to provide correct inference for K-nearest neighbour (KNN) matching estimators of average causal effects. This is an interesting result showing that bootstrap should not be applied without theoretical...

Girls typically have higher grades than boys in school and recent research suggests that part of this gender difference may be due to discrimination of boys. We rigorously test this in a field experiment where a random sample of the same tests in the Swedish language is subject to blind and...

The business cycle is likely to be of importance for self-employment rates. When the economy is growing, business opportunities open up and encourage the set-up of new firms. In downturns, self-employment may be a way to avoid unemployment. The strength of these pull and push factors may depend...

This paper investigates whether more general education reduces the risk of future unemployment by examining individuals’ labor market experiences during the “Great Recession” (2008–2010). To estimate the causal impact of differences in educational content, I exploit a reform in Sweden in...

This study examines how workplace size relates to transitions in- and out-of sickness absence. Overall, the study finds important differences in the long-term sickness absence behavior of individuals working in small and large workplaces. In particular, the results show that the sickness spells...

The aim of this study is to investigate the importance of intergenerational transmission of sick leave using universal Swedish register data on the rate of sickness benefits. We find that there is a positive correlation between parents’ and their children’s sick leave. The child–parent...