Calibrations of models related to life-cycle behavior of consumption and saving often invoke the important assumption of a unit root in individuals׳ labor-income process. We for the first time test this assumption using methods for univariate time series. Based on longitudinal register data...

The informational value of the aggregate US unemployment rate has recently been questioned because of a unit root in the labor-force participation rate; the lack of mean reversion implies that long-run changes in unemployment rates are highly unlikely to reflect long-run changes in joblessness....

Earlier studies on income inequality and crime have typically used total income or total earnings. However, it is quite likely that it is the changes in permanent rather than in transitory income that affects crime rates. The purpose of this paper is therefore to disentangle the two effects by,...

This study tests whether there is evidence of mean reversion in unemployment rates using the recently developed unit root test of Kapetanios et al. (2003). In this framework, the null hypothesis of a unit root process is tested against the alternative of a globally stationary exponential smooth...

Changes in the Swedish wage structure from 1992 to 2001 are investigated and placed in a longer-term perspective. The results show that the increase in overall wage dispersion that began in the early 1980s have continued during the 1990s, and that the increase during the 1990s is driven by...

This paper disentangles the effect of inequality in permanent and transitory wages on hours worked by, first, estimating the two components for Swedish industries and, second, using the resulting estimates as explanatory variables in an hours-worked equation. Consistent with Bell and Freeman’s...

The paper describes the Swedish wage distribution and how it correlates with worker mobility and plant-specific factors. It is well known that wage inequality has increased in Sweden since the mid-1980s. However, little evidence has so far been available as to whether this development reflects...

Recent immigrants tend to locate in ethnic enclaves within metropolitan areas. The economic consequence of living in such enclaves is still an unresolved issue. We use an immigrant policy initiative in Sweden, when government authorities distributed refugee immigrants across locales in a way...

Using a large longitudinal data set, we study the effects of increased trade on earnings and mobility in the Swedish labor market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Earnings respond significantly to changes in industry sales, whether generated by domestic market forces or international trade:...

Most previously used measures of immigrant labor market assimilation will be biased if there is non-random emigration of immigrants. We use longitudinal data on immigration to Sweden 1970-1990 to examine the extent and pattern of immigrant emigration and its consequences for measures of...