Economies with low unemployment often have high disability rates. In Norway, the permanent disability insurance rolls outnumber registered unemployment by four to one. Based on administrative register data matched with firms' financial statements and closure data collected from bankruptcy...

In most countries, employers are financially responsible for sick pay during an initial period of a worker's absence spell, after which the public insurance system covers the bill. Based on a quasi-natural experiment in Norway, where pay liability was removed for pregnancy-related absences, we...

Based on administrative data from Norway, we examine the extent to which family doctors influence their clients' propensity to claim sick pay and disability benefits. The analysis is based on exogenous shifts of family doctors occurring when physicians quit, retire, or for other reasons sell...

Using longitudinal data from the date of arrival, we study long‐term labor market and social insurance outcomes for all major immigrant cohorts to Norway since 1970. Immigrants from high-income countries performed as natives, while labor migrants from low‐income source countries had...

Based on local variations in vocational rehabilitation (VR) priorities, we examine the impacts of alternative VR programs on short- and long-term labor market outcomes for temporary disability insurance (TDI) claimants in Norway. The analysis builds on rich and detailed administrative registers...

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...

The paper argues that a comprehensive activation strategy is called for – in both unemployment and disability insurance – to minimize the conflict between income insurance and work incentives and to prevent the economic crisis from causing a long-lasting decline in labor force participation....

We investigate the impacts of economic incentives on the duration and outcome of temporary disability insurance (TDI) spells. The analysis is based on a large quasi-experiment in Norway, with a complete overhaul of the TDI benefit system. Our findings show that the labor supply of TDI claimants...

Based on individual longitudinal data, we examine the evolution of employment and earnings of post‐EU accession Eastern European labour immigrants to Norway for a period of up to eight years after entry. We find that the migrants were particularly vulnerable to the negative labour demand shock...

We evaluate a comprehensive activation program in Norway targeted at hard-to-employ social assistance claimants with reduced work capacity. The program offers a combination of tailored rehabilitation, training and job practice, and a generous, stable, and non-means-tested benefit. Its main aims...