We estimate the magnitude of social interaction effects in disability pension participation amongolder workers in Norway. The problem of omitted variable bias is addressed using neighbors’exposure to plant downsizing events as an instrument for the disability entry rate among one’spreviously...

This paper explores the effects of high and low skilled immigration to a hostcountry with unionized low skilled labor and an unemployment insurancescheme. It is shown that the consequences for the labor market and the welfareof natives depend crucially on the host country's production structure....

The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact onnational labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also variedgreatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurancebenefits and minimum...

Recent empirical evidence has found that employment services and small-businessassistance programmes are often successful at getting the unemployed back to work. Oneimportant concern of policy makers is to decide which of these two programmes is moreeffective and for whom...

Based on a sequence of reforms in the Norwegian unemployment insurance (UI) system, weshow that activity-oriented UI regimes – i.e., regimes with a high likelihood of requiredparticipation in active labor market programs, duration limitations on unconditional UIentitlements, and high sanction...

In July 2004, the Belgian government intensified monitoring within the UnemploymentInsurance scheme. Workers claiming unemployment benefits for more than 13 months arenotified that past job-search behavior will be monitored 8 months later...

Employers who use temporary agency staff in contrast to regular staff are not affected byemployment protection regulations when terminating a job. Therefore, services providedby temporary work agencies may be seen as a substitute for regular employment. In thispaper, we analyze the effects of...

In this paper we study the joint decision process of changing the structure of jobs and layingoff individual workers in a firm that downsizes its workforce. A hierarchical decision model isproposed and estimated using personnel data from a firm in demise comparing thecharacteristics of the...

This paper investigates the role that idiosyncratic uncertainty plays in shaping social preferences over the degree of labor market flexibility, in a general equilibrium model of dynamic labor demand where the productivity of firms evolves over time as a Geometric Brownian motion...

This paper analyzes the effect of firing costs on aggregate productivity growth. For thispurpose, a model of endogenous growth through selection and imitation is developed. It isconsistent with recent evidence on firm dynamics and on the importance of reallocation forproductivity growth...