This paper examines if the probability of leaving unemployment changes for unemployed parents with young children when childcare is available. To investigate this, I use the heterogeneity among Swedish municipalities before the implementation of a 2001 Swedish childcare reform making it...

A significant fraction of the labor force consists of employed workers who are part-time unemployed (underemployed) in the sense that they are unable to work as much as they prefer. This paper develops a search and matching model to study the design of optimal unemployment insurance in an...

This paper studies the determinants and labor market consequences of unemployed workers' wage demands using direct data on the workers' actual wage requests. Our results show that most workers want a wage close to what they earned in their previous jobs, and thus much more than they get in...

The paper develops an equilibrium search and matching model where two-person families as well as singles participate in the labor market. We show that equilibrium entails wage dispersion among equally productive risk-averse workers. Marital status as well as spousal labor market status matter...

This paper studies optimal unemployment benefit levels and optimal proportional income tax rates over the business cycle. Previous research suggests that policy makers should make unemployment insurance (UI) dependent on the business cycle because the UI system can be used to smooth consumption...

This paper studies the determinants of hiring. We use the search-matching model with imperfect competition in the product market from Carlsson, Eriksson and Gottfries (2011) to derive an equation for total hiring in a local labor market, and estimate it on Swedish panel data. When product...

Reduced form estimations of precautionary saving with respect to labor market risk have hitherto failed to consider that a decrease of say unemployment probability or an increase in unemployment insurance (UI) generosity affects saving not only by reducing the expected variance in earnings but...

We show that in micro data, as well as in a search and matching model with endogenous separations and rigid wages, separations and hence employment volatility are non-neutral to wage rigidities of incumbent workers. In contrast to when all wages are flexible, the standard deviation of...

This paper studies the probability of filling a vacancy, how it varies with the number of unemployed and number of vacancies in the local labor market, and what impact it has on employment. A greater availability of unemployed workers should make it easier for a firm to fill a vacancy but more...

We examine the matching process using monthly panel data for local labour markets in Sweden. We find that an increase in the number of vacancies has a very weak effect on the number of unemployed workers being hired: unemployed workers appear to be unable to compete for many available jobs....