Erling Barth

Focusing on jobs for youth, this study analyzes the development of job postings in Norway during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Jobs for youth are defined by the top 20 three-digit occupations for young workers, and postings for these occupations took a heavier hit than other jobs during the pandemic. We also identify...

A comparison of school‐to‐work transitions and labour market outcomes in four Nordic countries

This article revisits a central tenet of the welfare state paradox, also known as the inclusion-equality trade-off. Using large-scale survey data for 31 European countries and the United States, collected over a recent 15-year period, the article re-investigates the relationship between female labour force participation and gender segregation. Emph...

Stramhet på arbeidsmarkedet måles ved forholdet mellom antall ledige stillinger som bedrifter ønsker å fylle, og antall som ikke er i jobb, men søker arbeid. Situasjonen under pandemien skiller seg fra tidligere erfaringer ved at antall permitterte skjøt kraftig i været. Siden NAVs tall for helt ledige også inkluderer helt permitterte, som har en l...

Coordination in collective wage setting can constrain potential monopoly gains to unions in non-traded-goods industries. Countries with national wage coordination can thus stabilize overall employment against fluctuations and shocks in the world economy. We investigate this argument by exploring within-country variation in exposure to competition f...

Software represents a major and fast-growing share of firms’ capital investment, impacting demand for labor and what workers do on their jobs. Using U.S. Census Bureau panel data that link firms and workers, this paper estimates the effect of firm software capital on the earnings of workers by age group. We extend the AKM framework to include job-s...

Arbeidsmarkedene i vestlige land har blitt polarisert over tid ved at middelklasseyrker har blitt automatisert bort. Denne prosessen er tidligere også dokumentert i Norge. Ettersom automatiseringen og digitaliseringen har fortsatt å øke, undersøker vi i denne artikkelen om de polariserende tendensene fortsatt pågår. Ved å analysere norske registerd...

The book is the Europe volume in an international series on income, wealth, consumption, well-being, and inequality. It focuses on the European Union (EU) and its member countries and other European countries that are in close association with it. The book provides an overview of economic and social trends in the countries and in country groupings....

Despite dramatic workforce gains by women in recent decades, a substantial gender earnings gap persists and widens over the course of men's and women's careers. Since there are earnings differences across establishments, a key question is whether the widening of the gender pay gap arises from differences in career advances within the same establish...

The chapter demonstrates that while the Nordic countries remain relatively affluent and egalitarian, inequality of disposable household income has been on the rise over the past 30 years. The increase in income inequality and relative income poverty has been strongest in Sweden and more modest in the three other countries. In Sweden, and, to a less...

Får ungdom i Norden som fullfører videregående skole mellom 21 og 28 års alder bedre tilgang til arbeidsmarkedet enn de som ikke har fullført ved 28? Vi finner at de som har fullført innen 28 års alder, har 12-15 prosentpoeng lavere sannsynlighet for å være NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) enn de som ikke har fullført. Når vi kontrol...

Vi benytter endringer i satsene for fagforeningsfradrag i Norge mellom 2001 og 2012 og administrative registerdata til å identifisere hvordan skattefradraget og nettoprisen for medlemskap påvirker sannsynligheten for å være medlem i en fagforening. Vi finner at økt subsidiering bidrar til økt medlemskapssannsynlighet, mens økte priser for medlemska...

We exploit changes in tax subsidies for union members in Norway to identify the effects of changes in firm-level union density on productivity and wages. Increased deductions in taxable income for union members led to higher membership rates and contributed to a lower decline in union membership rates over time in Norway. Accounting for selection e...

Do skills protect against exclusion in adult ages, and how important are the skills acquired before the age of 16 years versus those acquired later on? We match the scores on numeracy and literacy skills from the 2011 PIAAC for young adults backwards to grade point average (GPA) data from compulsory school education, measured at the age of 16 years...

We augment standard log earnings equations for workers in US manufacturing with variables reflecting measured and unmeasured attributes of their employer. Using panel employee-establishment data, we find that establishment-level employment, education of coworkers, capital equipment per worker, and firm-level R&D intensity affects earnings substanti...

Tax evasion is low in many countries because third-party reporting makes employees unable to cheat. Why do not employees collude with their employer to evade taxes or evade as self-employed? We explain this puzzle in a model in which employees have both options. A trade-off between large-scale efficient production and tax evasion implies that tax e...

The gender earnings gap is an expanding statistic over the lifecycle. We use the LEHD Census 2000 to understand the roles of industry, occupation, and establishment 14 years after leaving school. The gap for college graduates 26 to 39 years old expands by 34 log points, most occurring in the first 7 years. About 44 percent is due to disproportionat...

This paper finds that U.S. employment changed differently relative to output in the Great Recession and recovery than in most other advanced countries or in the United States in earlier recessions. Instead of hoarding labor, U.S. firms reduced employment proportionately more than output in the Great Recession, with establishments that survived the...

Sammendrag Vi finner en sterk positiv sammenheng mellom kvalifikasjoner ved avsluttet grunnskole (målt ved grunnskolepoeng) og resultater oppnådd i PIAAC, men også at det som skjer senere i utdanningssystemet betyr mye for ferdigheter i alderen 16‒24 år. Vi finner også at ferdigheter man har tilegnet seg i grunnskolen, har mer å si for om man er NE...

We explore how more wage equality fuels the generosity of the welfare state via political competition in elections, and how a more generous welfare state fuels wage equality via empowerment of weak groups in the labor market. Together the two mechanisms may generate a cumulative process that explains how equality multiplies, and why countries with...

This paper analyzes the role of establishments in the upward trend in dispersion of earnings that has become a central topic in economic analysis and policy debate. It decomposes changes in the variance of log earnings among individuals into the part due to changes in earnings among establishments and the part due to changes in earnings within esta...

This paper analyzes the role of establishments in the upward trend in dispersion of earnings that has become a central topic in economic analysis and policy debate. It decomposes changes in the variance of ln earnings among individuals into the part due to changes in earnings among establishments and the part due to changes in earnings within-estab...

The small open economies in Scandinavia have for long periods had high work effort, small wage differentials, high productivity, and a generous welfare state. To understand how this might be an economic and political equilibrium we combine models of collective wage bargaining, creative job destruction, and welfare spending. The two-tier system of w...

Aunque Noruega y España presentan diferencias significativas en sus marcos institucionales (como su relación con la UE o su régimen de bienestar), ambos países comparten un interés en mantener la cohesión social y hacer frente a los llamados Nuevos Riesgos Sociales que afectan actualmente a las sociedades post-industriales. En este libro se analiza...

Monopsonistic discrimination refers to a situation in which employers differentiate pay between groups of workers who exhibit different elasticities of labour supply. The concept of dynamic monopsony has revived the idea of monopsonistic discrimination in the labour market. As there are frictions in the job-to-job mobility of workers, firms may exe...

The small open economies in Scandinavia have for long periods had high work effort, small wage differentials, high productivity, and a generous welfare state. To understand how this might be an economic and political equilibrium we combine models of collective wage bargaining, creative job destruction, and welfare spending. The two-tier system of w...

We propose a political reinforcement hypothesis, suggesting that rising inequality moves party politics on welfare state issues to the right, strengthening rather than modifying the impact of inequality. We model policy platforms by incorporating ideology and opportunism of party members and interests and sympathies of voters. If welfare spending i...

This book takes stock of the Nordic model and discusses the policy challenges from an economic point of view. The book is organised in three parts. Part I analyses the recent performance of the Nordic countries from a comparative and mainly macroeconomic perspective and identifies major challenges. Part II contains concise thematic analyses on comp...

Words: gender wage gap; marital patterns; age at marriage; husband-wife age gap; husband-wife educational gap; homogamy; division of labor in the home; household economics JEL Classifications:, as well as seminar participants at Rutgers and Cornell for valuable comments and suggestions.

The authors explore the effects of organizational change on employee well-being using multivariate analyses of linked employer-employee data for Britain, with particular emphasis on whether unions moderate these effects. Nationally representative data consist of 13,500 employees in 1,238 workplaces. Organizational changes are associated with increa...

Life cycle wages of immigrants from developing countries fall short of catching up with wages of natives. This disparity reflects both lower wages at entry and lower wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data, we show that 40 percent of the native-immigrant wage gap is explained by differential sorting across establishments. Our findings poin...

Theory predicts that performance pay boosts wage dispersion. Workers retain a share of individual productivity shocks and high‐efficiency workers receive compensation for greater effort. Collective bargaining can mitigate the effect of performance pay on wage inequality by easing monitoring of common effort standards and group‐based pay schemes. An...

To put Scandinavian employment in perspective, we ask whether wage compression hampers employment rates, or not. We answer by reviewing the most important theoretical arguments and the most informative regularities across countries with different wage distributions. The pattern seems to be that countries with compressed wage distributions tend to h...

Labour market outcomes of immigrants and natives are affected differently by changes in macroeconomic conditions. In pa rticular, we show that earnings of immigrants from outside the OECD area are more sensitive to local labour market conditions than are earnings of natives. Failure to account for this may bias estimates of earnings assimilation of...

Labour-market polarization is characterized by increased employment in occupations at the top but also at the bottom of the skills and wage distributions, followed by a relative decline in ‘middling’ occupations. This paper documents a polarization trend also in the Nordic labour markets and contrasts it to comparative findings for the USA. Analysi...

Using linked employer-employee data for Britain we find that higher wages are associated with higher job satisfaction and higher job anxiety. The association between wages and non-pecuniary job satisfaction disappears with the inclusion of effort measures whereas the positive association between wages and job anxiety remains strong and significant...

We explore the effects of management innovations on worker well-being using private sector linked employer-employee data for Britain. We find management innovations are associated with lower worker well-being and lower job satisfaction, an effect which becomes more pronounced when we account for the endogeneity of innovation. This is the case for t...

Motivated by models of worker flows, we argue in this paper that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap. Using matched employer–employee data from Norway, we estimate establishment-specific wage premiums separately for men and women, conditioning on fixed individual effects. Regressions of worker...

Since unification, the debate about Germany's poor economic performance has focused on supply-side weaknesses, and the associated reform agenda sought to make low-skill labour markets more flexible. We question this diagnosis using three lines of argument. First, effective restructuring of the supply side in the core advanced industries was carried...

The complementarity between wage setting and welfare spending can explain how almost equally rich countries differ in economic and social equality among their citizens. More wage equality increases the welfare generosity via political competition in elections. A more generous welfare state fuels wage equality via an empowerment of weak groups in th...

Using private sector linked employeremployee data for Britain we explore the effects of management innovations on worker wellbeing. We fin d management innovations are associated with lower worker wellbeing and lower job satisfac tion, an effect which becomes more pronounced when we account for the endogeneity of innovation. The effect is ameliorat...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of why some firms tie compensation to worker performance as well as the variation in type of performance pay system across firms. Design/methodology/approach The study first presents a theoretical framework that motivates n empirical study of performance‐related pay. The data are ba...

A vast and often confusing economics literature relates competition to investment in innovation. Following Joseph Schumpeter, one view is that monopoly and large scale promote investment in research and development by allowing a firm to capture a larger fraction of its benefits and by providing a more stable platform for a firm to invest in R&D. Ot...

This paper examines the impact of performance-related pay on wage differentials within firms. Our theoretical framework predicts that, compared to a fixed pay system, pay schemes based on individual output increase within-firm wage inequality, while group-based bonuses have minor effects on wage dispersion. Theory also predicts an interaction betwe...

Using Norwegian data from interviews with about 3,500 employees in 759 establishments, the male-female wage differential is decomposed into its between and within establishment components. In the private sector, the gross wage differential of 23 percent is reduced to 13 by checking for human capital and job characteristics, and to 8 by (also) check...

In this paper, we investigate the effects of the boom in education on the wage structure in Europe. We use detailed information on the distribution of wages, estimated from microdata from 12 European countries from the beginning of the 1980’s to the present, to analyse the changes both between and within groups. We specify and estimate a model with...

In this paper we analyse how fairness considerations, in particular considerations of just income distribution, affect whether or not people believe tax evasion can be justified and their willingness to engage in tax evasion. Using data from the Norwegian “Hidden Labour Market Survey” we show that individuals with low wages or long working hours, i...

Using Norwegian establishment surveys from 1997 and 2003, we show that performance-related pay is more prevalent in firms where workers of the main occupation have a high degree of autonomy in how to organize their work. This observation supports an interpretation of incentive pay as motivated by agency problems. Performance-related pay is also mor...

It turns out that the employer-size effect on individual wages dwindles away once one control for the number of workers of the same skill-group (educational type) as the observed individual within the establishment. The skill-group size effect on wages is substantial. The main results, a dwindling employer size effect and a significant group size e...

Unreported labour by one worker in a firm increases the probability of detection for his fellow workers, not only for himself. The firm takes this external effect into account. As a consequence, unreported work becomes rationed by the firms demand, rather than determined by demand equal supply. The gap between supply and demand increases with firm...

This article analyses the relationship between family ownership and productivity, with special focus on the role of owner-management. The results show that family-owned firms are less productive than non-family-owned firms. This productivity gap is, however, explained by differences in management regime. Family-owned firms managed by a person hired...

Land of Opportunity? Comparing Earnings Profiles of Immigrants in Norway and the United States. The authors use com- parable micro data from Norway and the United States to estimate and compare earn- ings profiles of immigrants relative to those of natives of the two host countries. The analyses control for differences in individual characteristics...

Failure to account for differences between immigrants and natives in their responsiveness to changes in macroeconomic conditions may bias estimates of assimilation effects on immigrant earnings. Using Norwegian register data from 1980 to 1996, we first establish that earnings of immigrants from non-OECD countries exhibit greater sensitivity to loca...

The authors use comparable micro data from Norway and the United States to estimate and compare earnings profiles of immigrants relative to those of natives of the two host countries. The analyses control for differences in individual characteristics, such as education, gender and age, as well as local labour market conditions. Results reveal that...

Labour market outcomes of immigrants and natives are affected differently by macroeconomic conditions. In particular, we show that earnings of immigrants in Norway from outside the OECD area are more sensitive to local labour market conditions than are earnings of natives. Failure to account for such differences may bias estimates when periods of r...

We provide evidence on wage profiles of immigrants using CPS data from 1979 to 2001, taking into account that changes in labor market conditions impact natives and immigrants differently. High rates of immigrant wage assimilation in general, and relatively high wages of immigrant cohorts that arrived during the 1990s in particular, can largely be e...

Abstract This paper presents evidence on the ,sorting of heterogenous ,workers across heterogenous establishments. Individuals’ wages are decomposedinto a time-varying component, an individual effect, and an establishment specific effect. Individual and establishment specific effects are furthermore,decomposed ,into an observable ,and an unobservab...

This paper presents both theoretical analysis and econometric evidence for the United States, Great Britain and Norway on the extent to which hourly wages of different groups of workers are sensitive to local labour market conditions. We focus on differences by union status. Our theoretical framework captures both a turnover-based efficiency wage m...

Using a matched employer-employee data set for Norway, we exploit rare information on the union status of both individual employees and their workplaces. We establish two key results. First, we find a positive effect of workplace trade union density on the level of the individual's pay in establishments covered by collective agreements. Second, we...

This paper analyses wage formation in the Nordic countries at the regional level by the use of micro-data. Our results deviate systematically from the main conclusions drawn by Blanchflower and Oswald (1994). We find no stable negative relation between wages and unemployment across regions in the Nordic labor markets once regional fixed effects are...

Models of worker flows have revitalized the idea of monopsony in the labor market. We apply such a model to gender differences. We argue that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap, in particular with respect to differences arising between occupations and establishments. Using matched employer-em...