This paper is concerned with the labor market experience of Swedish youths during the 1980s and the 1990s. The first objective is to portray early economic attainment among young Swedes. The second objective of the paper is to examine the impact of labor market programs on youth employment. We...

This paper studies the determinants and labor market consequences of unemployed workers’ wage demands using direct data on the workers’ actual wage requests. Our results show that most workers want a wage close to what they earned in their previous jobs, and thus much more than they get in...

Swedish unemployment was very low up to the early 1990s when it rose rapidly. Theoretically, decentralisation of wage bargaining in the 1980s might have allowed low-productivity firms to survive or increased wage mark-ups, making employment more sensitive to shocks. In Swedish plant-level data...

This paper studies effects of unemployment and labour market programmes on real wages in the Czech and Slovak Republics using district paneldata for the period 1992-1998. Clear evidence of a "wage curve" exists in both countries. The estimated unemployment elasticity of pay is, however, higher...

This paper investigates the role of skill depreciation in the relationship between work interruptions and subsequent wages. Using a unique longitudinal dataset, the Swedish part of the International Adult Literacy Survey, we are able to analyze changes in literacy skills for individuals as a...