In all OECD countries, mandatory notice (MN) policies require firms to inform workers in advance of a layoff. In our theoretical framework, MN helps workers avoid unemployment and find better jobs by encouraging them to search for a new job while still employed, thereby increasing future production. The magnitude of this production gain depends on the relative effectiveness of search while employed versus unemployed. But on-the-job search and diminished work incentives reduce current production. If future gains outweigh current production losses, longer advance notice improves production efficiency. If not, Coasian bargaining predicts that firms offer a larger severance instead of longer notice. With bargaining, the sole efficiency loss of MN is due to delayed separations of unproductive job matches. We test these predictions using novel Swedish administrative data on layoff notifications. Workers eligible for extended MN receive longer notice and larger severance, resulting in less exposure to nonemployment spells and higher-paying jobs. These favorable labor market outcomes are solely due to longer notice; in contrast, larger severance delays job finding and has no impact on wages. We also show that advance notice replaces job search while unemployed with more effective search while employed. On the production side, we document a productivity drop among notified workers and estimate a production loss due to delayed separations. Using our estimates of production gains and losses to evaluate the overall production efficiency, we conclude that the gains of MN seem to outweigh the losses.

This article aims to measure and understand the role of inheritances in shaping wealth inequality. We use a quasi-experimental design and Swedish administrative data to document that the average heir depletes her inheritance within a decade while the inheritances of wealthy heirs remain intact. These different depletion rates are not due to different consumption or labour supply responses but due to different rates of return on inherited wealth. Upon their receipt, inheritances reduce relative measures of wealth inequality, such as top shares or percentile ratios. Theoretically, this reduction in inequality could be due to either a compressed inheritance distribution or similar chances of having wealthy parents (high intergenerational mobility). Empirically, the first force is more significant in Sweden. Within a decade, however, the effect is reversed: inheritances increase wealth inequality since the different depletion rates widen the inequality in inherited wealth over time. This implies that inheritance taxation can reduce long run wealth inequality only through the taxation of wealthy heirs.

I document evidence of a systematic bias in the widely-used estimate of annual hours worked using the Current Population Survey. The bias stems from multiplying the number of weeks worked by the median – instead of the mean – of weekly working hours. Theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that this bias leads to an overestimation of annual hours.

We document the evolution of women's status across the globe and throughout recorded history.We first construct a new database of seven million notable individuals (Human BiographicalRecord). We then measure women's status as women's share among the most prominent fractionof population that allows comparison across time and space. The records show no long-run trendin women's share in recorded history. Historically, women's power has been a side-effect ofnepotism: the more important family connections, the higher the women's share. But self-madewomen began to rise among the writers in the 17th century before a broader take off started withthe 1800 birth cohort: first among artists and scholars, followed by elected politicians, and finallyappointed politicians. The first wave among writers emerged when informal humanist educationand new public spheres shaped a supply of literary women, who met the demand of a new femalereading public. A strong writer wave predicts a stronger takeoff of self-made women in the 19thcentury. This effect has persisted and created cross-country divergence. 

We construct a new dataset of more than seven million notable individuals across recorded human history, the Human Biographical Record (HBR). With Wikidata as the backbone, HBR adds further information from various digital sources, including Wikipedia in all 292 languages. Machine learning and text analysis combine the sources and extract information on date and place of birth and death, gender, occupation, education, and family background. This paper discusses HBR's construction and its completeness, coverage, accuracy, and also its strength and weakness relative to prior datasets. HBR is the first part of a larger project, the human record project that we briefly introduce.

This paper studies whether adverse selection can rationalize a universal mandate for unemployment insurance (UI). Building on a unique feature of the unemployment policy in Sweden, where workers can opt for supplemental UI coverage above a minimum mandate, we provide the first direct evidence for adverse selection in UI and derive its implications for UI design. We find that the unemployment risk is more than twice as high for workers who buy supplemental coverage. Exploiting variation in risk and prices, we show how 25-30 percent of this correlation is driven by risk-based selection, with the remainder driven by moral hazard. Due to the moral hazard and despite the adverse selection we find that mandating the supplemental coverage to individuals with low willingness-to-pay would be suboptimal. We show under which conditions a design leaving choice to workers would dominate a UI system with a single mandate. In this design, using a subsidy for supplemental coverage is optimal and complementary to the use of a minimum mandate.

We define social inclusion (SI) as the equality of success rate conditional on circumstances, i.e., inherent characteristics and family background. We measure SI using an aggregator, social inclusion function, e.g., mutual information or the share of success variance unexplained by circumstances. Another interpretation of SI is the unpredictability of success using circumstances. We discuss the role of out-of-sample prediction and machine learning in estimating SI, which we then illustrate in three complementary applications. The first two applications document global SI using a small set of circumstances: the inclusiveness of the elite in long-run history and contemporary SI of education. The first application measures the inclusiveness of the elite in the long-run history and reveals the exceptional high SI in the 20th century. The second application estimates contemporary SI of literacy across 68 countries and shows that country of birth is an obstacle to SI as much as family background. The third application estimate SI in Sweden today using a rich set of circumstances from administrative data. In order: Gender, nationality of parents, and their income/education restrict inclusion whereas the place of birth plays almost no role.

We establish seven facts about temporary layoffs (TL), whose employers communicated an anticipated recall date at layoff: (1) The higher the current TL share at firm/industry-level, the higher (lower) the future recall (layoff) likelihood for both temporary and permanent layoffs (employees); (2) TL is more prevalent in: the upper-middle part of the wage distribution, (3-4) in mass layoffs and recessions; (5) The later the communicated recall date, the lower the accepted new-job wage, unconditional and conditional on non-employment duration; (6) TLs' new-job hazard rate (wage) jumps (drops) when recall likelihood falls; (7) Extending unemployment benefits increases separations in recall-intense sectors.

Contrary to standard search models predictions, past studies have not found a positive effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on reemployment wages. We estimate a positive UI wage effect exploiting an age-based regression discontinuity design in Austria. A search model incorporating duration dependence predicts two countervailing forces: UI induces workers to seek higher-wage jobs, but reduces wages by lengthening unemployment. Matching-function heterogeneity plausibly generates a negative relationship between the UI unemployment-duration and wage effects, which holds empirically in our sample and across studies, reconciling disparate wage-effect estimates. Empirically, UI raises wages by improving reemployment firm quality and attenuating wage drops.

Contrary to standard search model predictions, prior studies failed to estimate a positive effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on reemployment wages. This paper estimates a positive UI wage effect exploiting an age-based regression discontinuity in Austrian administrative data. A search model incorporating duration dependence determines the UI wage effect as the balance between two offsetting forces: UI causes agents to seek higher-wage jobs, but also reduces wages by lengthening unemployment. This implies a negative relationship between the UI unemployment duration and wage effects, which holds empirically both in our sample and across studies, reconciling disparate wage-effect estimates. Empirically, UI raises wages by improving reemployment firms' quality and attenuating wage drops.