Wage Setting in Sweden: An Empirical Test of a Barebones Union Model

ABSTRACT In this paper a simple monopoly union model for the Swedish economy is presented and estimated. Interest is focused on the union's objectives. The results indicate that two popular representations of union objectives — wage bill and rent maximisation — are rejected by the data. Instead, preferences are highly concave in the wage rate, with an estimated degree of relative risk aversion well above unity evaluated at sample means.     

Targeted estimation of state occupation probabilities for the non-Markov illness-death model

We use semi-parametric efficiency theory to derive a class of estimators for the state occupation probabilities of the continuous-time irreversible illness-death model. We consider both the setting with and without additional baseline information available, where we impose no specific functional form on the intensity functions of the model. We show that any estimator in the class is asymptotically linear under suitable assumptions about the estimators of the intensity functions. In particular, the assumptions are weak enough to allow the use of data-adaptive methods, which is important for making the identifying assumption of coarsening at random plausible in realistic settings. We suggest a flexible method for estimating the transition intensity functions of the illness-death model based on penalized Poisson regression. We apply this method to estimate the nuisance parameters of an illness-death model in a simulation study and a real-world application.     

The will to sanction: How sensitive are caseworkers to recipients’ responsibility when imposing sanctions on non-compliance in a welfare-to-work programme?

The activation trend in social policy entails that caseworkers on the frontlines of the welfare state are expected to decide ‘reasonable’ activation requirements for clients and when and how non-compliance should be sanctioned. This study investigates how caseworkers form judgements about their clients’ personal responsibility when activation requirements are violated and how their judgements about responsibility matter for the sanctions they impose. We find that caseworkers are sensitive to personal responsibility, varying the motivation for not fulfilling the activation requirement from a case where the client has less control (circumstances) to one with more control (choice) more than doubles sanctions.