Building on a complete account of registered unemployment spells in Norway, we study how the composition of unemployment has developed over the last ten years. The total volume of unemployment has become more unequally distributed than before, but it is difficult to identify the ‘losers’ in...

The decision by firms to offer an occupational pension is investigated with a unique linked employer-employee dataset, supplemented with detailed actuarial calculations of the cost to the firms of offering occupational pensions and constructed tax gains from pension contributions versus cash...

The application of continuous time Weibull models on discrete unemployment duration data may produce bias in the estimated shape of the hazard rate. The bias can be substantial even for weekly duration data, and it is seriously aggravated if the Weibull model is erroneously mixed with a Gamma...

We present new Monte Carlo evidence regarding the feasibility of separating causality from selection within non-experimental interval-censored duration data, by means of the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator (NPMLE). Key findings are: i) the NPMLE is extremely reliable, and it...

Building on register data describing monthly labour market status for the whole Norwegian population 1992-95, we estimate grouped competing risk hazard rate models for transitions between employment, unemployment and non-participation. The models impose no parametric restrictions on either...

By comparing mean outcomes for a large number of matched samples of participants and nonparticipants we estimate individual earnings effect of the Norwegian labour market training programme (LMT) targeted at unemployed adults in the years 1991-1996. The average training effect on the trained is...

Individual long run effects of a labour market training programme targeted at unemployed adults are evaluated by comparing mean post-training earnings for matched samples of participants and non-participants. Average training effects on the trained are positive and persistent over the...