Based on comprehensive administrative register data from Norway, we examine the determinants of sickness absence behavior; in terms of employee characteristics workplace characteristics, panel doctor characteristics, and economic conditions. The analysis is based on a novel concept of a worker's...

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...

We use a flexible hazard rate model with unrestricted spell duration and calendar time effects to analyse a dataset including all Norwegian unemployment spells during the 1990s. The dataset provides a unique access to conditionally independent variation in unemployment compensation. We find that...

We examine the origins and outcome of entrepreneurship on the basis of exceptionally comprehensive Norwegian matched worker-firm-owner data. In contrast to most existing studies, our notion of entrepreneurship not only comprises self-employment, but also employment in partly self-owned limited...

How does a centrally imposed egalitarian wage policy affect unemployment when workers differ with respect to productivity? The effect on total unemployment is found to be ambiguous. Egalitarian wages encourage job creation because increased profits derived from the most productive workers more...

This paper investigates empirically the presence of unemployment hysteresis in 16 OECD countries, applying aggregate quarterly unemployment rates covering the past 25 years. Alternative test procedures are discussed and employed, posing both stationarity and hysteresis as null hypotheses. The...

Does an income tax harm economic efficiency more the more progressive it is? Public economics provides a strong case for a definite "yes." But at least three forces may pull in the other direction. First, low-wage workers may on average have more elastic labour supply schedules than high-wage...