Per-Anders Edin

Ethnic Enclaves and the Economic Success of Immigrants—Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Recent immigrants tend to locate in ethnic ”enclaves” within metropolitan areas. The economic consequence of living in such enclaves is still an unresolved issue. We use an immigrant policy initiative in Sweden, when government authorities distributed refugee immigrants across locales in a way that may be considered exogenous. This policy initiative provides a unique natural experiment, which allows us to estimate the causal effect on labor market outcomes of living in enclaves. We find substantive evidence of sorting across locations. When sorting is taken into account, living in enclaves improves labor market outcomes; for instance, the earnings gain associated with a standard deviation increase in ethnic concentration is in the order of four to five percent.

Career Interruptions and Subsequent Earnings: A Reexamination Using Swedish Data

This paper reexamines the link between career interruptions and subsequent wages. Using a rich new Swedish dataset, we are able to disaggregate time out of work into several components. Regressing log wages on aggregate total time out leads to the standard result, i.e., a negative coefficient on time out. However, we find that different types of time out have different effects on wages and that these effects vary by gender. This casts doubt on the usual human capital depreciation interpretation that has been placed on the negative coefficient of total time out in the wage equation. We propose a simple signaling model as an alternative interpretation.

Political determinants of budget deficits: Coalition effects versus minority effects

This paper reexamines some recent empirical evidence on the hypothesis that institutional arrangements in the political process affect budget deficits. The results of Roubini and Sachs (1989b) are replicated, and sensitivity analysis indicate that their results are robust. However, the main conclusion of Roubini and Sachs, that coalition governments are less capable of budgetary discipline, needs to be modified. A reformulation of their variable representing political cohesion reveals that it captures the effects of minority governments rather than majority coalition governments. The data support the hypothesis that it is harder to negotiate in parliament than within a government.

Unemployment duration, unemployment benefits, and labor market programs in Sweden

Standard search theory and some empirical evidence suggest that an unemployed individuals probability of entering employment increases as they approach the time when unemployment benefits are due to expire. This pattern may not carry over to countries such as Sweden, where labour market programmes are targeted at the long-term unemployed at risk of benefit exhaustion. This paper examines movements out of unemployment using data on unemployed individuals in Sweden. A semi-parametric competing risks model for transitions to employment, labour market programmes and non-participation is estimated. There is some evidence that the exit rate from unemployment to employment increases as benefit exhaustion is approached.

Swimming with the Tide: Solidary Wage Policy and the Gender Earnings Gap

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of wage compression for the gender wage gap in Sweden during the period 1968-1991. We find that the effects of changes in the wage structure on women’s wages have varied over time and have had partly counteracting effects. Changes in industry wage differentials have systematically worked against women, while the changes in the returns to human capital and unobserved characteristics have contributed to reductions in the gender wage gap. Changes in the wage structure were particularly important between 1968 and 1974 when the reduction of overall wage inequality was dramatic. In 1981, however, the wage compression effect accounted only for a minor proportion of womens relative wage gains, as compared to 1974. At this time, women gained in relative wages mainly because discrimination was mitigated and/or the gender gap in unobserved skills was reduced. Between 1981 and 1991 there is a small increase in the gender wage gap. This small increase seems to have been driven by changed inter-industry wage differentials.

Peers, neighborhoods and immigrant student achievement : evidence from a placement policy

We examine to what extent immigrant school performance is affected by the characteristics of the neighborhoods that they grow up in. We address this issue using a refugee placement policy which provides exogenous variation in the initial place of residence in Sweden. The main result is that school performance is increasing in the number of highly educated adults sharing the subject�s ethnicity. A standard deviation increase in the fraction of high-educated in the assigned neighborhood raises compulsory school GPA by 0.9 percentile ranks. This magnitude corresponds to a tenth of the performance gap between refugee immigrant and nativeborn children.

Moving costs and housing demand : Are recent movers really in equilibrium?

Abstract Several recent housing demand studies use samples of recent movers based on the presumption that only such households are on their demand curves. We find, contrary to this presumption, that the absolute values of the residuals from a standard housing demand equation fall with duration in the present dwelling. This shows that the correlation pattern between housing and the explanatory variables at the moving date does not correspond to the average pattern over a typical housing spell. We interpret this as evidence of forward-looking behavior and show how it may be handled in econometric work with cross-section samples.

Marginal Taxes and the Asset Portfolios of Swedish Households

This paper focuses on the effects of marginal tax rates, wealth, income, and a set of socioeconomic and demographic variables on the portfolio composition of households using detailed micro data on 2,000 Swedish households. In particular, efforts are made to disentangle the effects of marginal tax rates on the portfolio behavior of households. Some econometric problems involved when estimating asset demand equations in the presence of incomplete portfolios are briefly discussed. A final section examines the overall effect of marginal tax rates on asset demands by applying estimated discrete and continuous portfolio equations to compute different tax elasticities. Copyright 1990 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

Unemployment Duration and Competing Risks: Evidence from Sweden

The determinants of unemployment duration are studied in the presence of multiple exits out of unemployment. The results indicate that state aggregation may be a severe problem in empirical analysis of a labor market such as the one in Sweden. Estimating a joint model for all transitions out of unemployment leads to biased estimates, since different transitions are governed by different mechanisms. The results also indicate positive duration dependence in both transitions to regulate employment and transitions out of the labor force, but no duration dependence in transitions to public labor market programs. Copyright 1989 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

Efficiency Wages and Industry Wage Differentials: A Comparison Across Methods of Pay

Efficiency wage considerations should be less important for piece-rate pay than for time wages. Therefore, if industry wage differentials reflect efficiency wage factors, then these pay differences should be less sizable and have less explanatory power for piecework than for timework. We test this proposition using wage data for male production workers employed in the Swedish metalworking industries in 1985. The data are partitioned into two groups of workers. In our preferred sub-sample of workers who received pay under both piece rates and time wages, our results are uniformly consistent with efficiency wage implications for industry wage differentials. For the subsample of workers who received pay under either piece rates or time wages, industry wage differentials are of equal importance under either pay scheme. These latter results, however, may also be influenced by unaccounted for sorting of workers and employers across methods of pay. Overall, our examination of industry wage differentials across methods of pay provides mixed support for efficiency wage theory.