We develop an equilibrium model of wages and estimate it using administrative data from Norway. Coworkers interact through a task-assignment model, and wages are determined through multilateral bargaining over the surplus that accrues to the workforce. Seniority affects wages through workplace...

Among policymakers, educators and economists there remains a strong, sometimes heated, debate on the extent to which good schools matter. This is seen, for instance, in the strong trend towards establishing accountability systems in education in many countries across the world. In this paper, in...

A variety of public campaigns, including the Just Say No campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to Just Say No to Drugs, are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on the...

In every society for which we have data, people's educational achievement is positively correlated with their parents' education or with other indicators of their parents' socioeconomic status. This topic is central in social science, and there is no doubt that research has intensified during...

Using a variance decomposition framework which provides bounds on the effect of families and neighbourhoods, we find important effects of family characteristics and residential location on educational attainment and adult earnings in Norway. Neighbourhoods are less important than families, as...

School quality is hard to define and measure. It is influenced by not only school expenditures, but also characteristics that are hard to measure like norms and peer effects among teachers and pupils. Furthermore, family background and community characteristics are important in explaining...

Despite important policy implications associated with the allocation of education resources, evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive. In part, this is due to endogenous allocation; families sort themselves non-randomly into school districts and school districts...

Whether increasing resource use in schools has a positive effect on pupil performance has occupied governments, parents and researchers for decades. A main challenge when trying to answer this question is to separate the effects of school resources from the effects of pupils? family background,...

In this paper we analyze the pattern of employment adjustment using a rich panel of Norwegian plants. The data suggest that the frequency of episodes of zero net employment changes is inversely related to plant size. We develop and estimate a simple ?q? model of labor demand, allowing for the...

A variety of public campaigns, including the Just Say No campaign of the 1980s and 1990s that encouraged teenagers to Just Say No to Drugs, are based on the premise that teenagers are very susceptible to peer influences. Despite this, very little is known about the effect of school peers on the...