Based on Norwegian administrative registers we provide new empirical evidence on the effects of the childhood neighborhood's socioeconomic status on educational and labor market performance. A neighborhood's status is measured annually by its prime age inhabitants' earnings ranks within larger...

We evaluate the impact of labour market programmes on unemployment durations in Norway, by means of a distribution-free mixed proportional competing risks hazard rate model. We find that programme participation, once completed, improves employment prospects, but that there is often an...

During the 1990s, a new subsidized early retirement option was assigned quasi-randomly to two-thirds of Norwegian elderly workers. We use this 'natural experiment' to evaluate how economic incentives affect retirement behaviour. The new retirement option reduced employment substantially, and...

Does an income tax harm economic efficiency more the more progressive it is? Public economics provides a strong case for a definite "yes". But at least three forces may pull in the other direction. First, low-wage workers may on average have more elastic labour supply schedules than high-wage...

We exploit a comprehensive restructuring of the early retirement system in Norway in 2011 to examine labor supply responses to alternative pension reform strategies relying on improved work incentives (flexibility) or increased access ages (prescription), respectively. We find that increasing...

We examine empirically the impacts of labor market policies - in terms of unemployment insurance (UI) and active labor market programs (ALMP) - on the duration and outcome of job search and on the quality of a subsequent job. We find that time invested in job search tends to pay off in the form...

We use a flexible hazard rate model with unrestricted spell duration and calendar time effects to analyse a dataset including all Norwegian unemployment spells during the 1990s. The dataset provides a unique access to conditionally independent variation in unemployment compensation. We find that...

How does a centrally imposed egalitarian wage policy affect unemployment when workers differ with respect to productivity? The effect on total unemployment is found to be ambiguous. Egalitarian wages encourage job creation because increased profits derived from the most productive workers more...