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...

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...

The paper examines the possible effects of introducing a large-scale welfare reform in Sweden, namely, the introduction of comprehensive welfare accounts. Under this policy, individuals make mandatory contributions to accounts, which they can top up with voluntary contributions. In return,...

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...

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...

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 suggest a political economy explanation for the stylized fact that intragenerationally more redistributive social security systems are smaller. We relate the stylized fact to an "efficiencyredistribution" trade-off to be resolved by political process. The inefficiency of social security...

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...

To estimate the effects of large cuts in pensions on the age of first benefit receipt, we exploit two natural experiments in which such cuts affect a group of repatriated ethnic German workers. The pensions were cut by about 12%, yet, according to our regression discontinuity estimates based on...