Purpose To evaluate the body of evidence of the effects of work-directed interventions on return-to-work for people on sick leave due to common mental disorders (i.e., mild to moderate depression, anxiety, adjustment disorders and reactions to severe stress).

Methods The systematic review was conducted in accordance with an a priori developed and registered protocol (Prospero CRD42021235586). The certainty of evidence was assessed by two independent reviewers using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations.

Results We reviewed 14,794 records published between 2015 and 2021. Of these, eight RCTs published in eleven articles were included in the analysis. Population: Working age adults (18 to 64 years), on sick leave due to mild to moderate depression, anxiety, adjustment disorders or reactions to severe stress. Intervention: Work-directed interventions. Comparator: No comparator, Standard care, or other measures. Outcome: return to work, number of days on sick leave, income. Overall, the effects of work-focused CBT and work-focused team-based support on RTW resulted in increased or faster return-to-work compared with standard care or no intervention (low certainty of evidence). The effects of Individual Placement and Support showed no difference in RTW compared with standard care (very low certainty of evidence).

Conclusion Interventions involving the workplace could increase the probability of RTW. Areas in need of improvement in the included studies, for example methodological issues, are discussed. Further, suggestions are made for improving methodological rigor when conducting large scale trials.

We report results from a large-scale randomized experiment evaluating whether a supported employment rehabilitation intervention strategy can improve labor market opportunities for young adults on disability pension better than regular vocational rehabilitation. The supported employment intervention utilizes a caseworker as backup for the individual during training to reduce employers’ risks when hiring an individual with unclear productivity. In total, 1,062 individuals were randomly assigned between interventions. The main results show that 18 months after the start of the project, participants with supported employment have work rates that are approximately ten percentage points higher than participants who received regular rehabilitation.

In this paper, we use matched worker-firm register data from Sweden to examine the career dynamics of high-skill women and men. Specifically, we track wages for up to 20 years among women and men born in the years 1960-70 who completed a university degree in business or economics. These women and men have similar wages and earnings at the start of their careers, but their career paths diverge substantially as they age. These men and women also have substantial differences in wage paths associated with becoming a parent. We look at whether firm effects account for the differences we observe between women's and men's wage profiles. We document differences between the firms where men work and those where women work. However, a wage decomposition suggests that these differences in firm characteristics play only a small role in explaining the gender log wage gap among these workers. We then examine whether gender differences in firm-to-firm mobility help explain the patterns in wages that we see. Men and women both exhibit greater mobility early in their careers, but there is little gender difference in this firmto-firm mobility. We find that the main driver of the gender difference in log wage profiles is that men experience higher wage gains than women do both as switchers and as stayers.

A unique examination strategy in first-year microeconomics courses is used to test for gender differences in examination behavior. Students have the possibility of attaining a seminar bonus on the final exam for near-perfect seminar attendance and are given two voluntary initial quizzes during the semester. At the final exam, the scores received on initial quizzes can either be accepted as is, or students can attempt to improve their marks by answering similar quiz questions on the exam. Results suggest that female students are more likely to take initial quizzes and receive a seminar bonus but are less likely to re-take quiz questions on the final exam. These results suggest higher risk aversion, less overconfidence, and more self-discipline or less procrastination among female students relative to male students. Our estimated behavioral differences may have important implications in terms of final grades on the course. (JEL I21, J16, A12, A14)

Analysing a reform in the Swedish public sickness insurance, we find that an increased replacement rate for one spouse has a negative cross effect on the other spouse's labour supply. The cross effects are present in the labour supply margins that workers can easily adjust. For wives of treated husbands, the total number of sick days increases on average 9.1% per month, whereas labour earnings are unchanged. The cross effect on total sick days for husbands to treated wives is 6.1% on average, with no effect on annual labour earnings. The total number of sick days and annual labour earnings for treated spouses are estimated to be unaffected by the reform, which indicates that the cross effects stem specifically from higher insurance coverage for the couples.

This paper analyses if privatisation of vocational rehabilitation can improve labour market opportunities for individuals on long-term sickness absence. We use a field experiment performed by the Public Employment Service and the Social Insurance Agency in Sweden during 2008-2010, in which over 4000 participants were randomly offered private and public rehabilitation. We find no differences in employment rates following rehabilitation between individuals who received rehabilitation by private and public providers. Also the average cost of rehabilitation was essentially equal for the two types of providers. This suggests that there are no large efficiency gains from privatising vocational rehabilitation.

Most developed countries have compulsory insurance programs for temporary disability, that is, cash benefits for non-work-related sickness. Despite the economic significance of these programs, little is known about their effects on work absenteeism or labor supply. We exploit a policy reform that consisted of the abolishment of a waiting day together with an increase of cash benefits for short sick leaves. We find that the total number of days of sickness absence was reduced by the reform, which is likely due to the fact that the abolishment of the waiting period made it less costly for workers to be absent for short periods.

In this paper we investigate whether a relaxation in seniority rules (the “last-in-first-out” principle) had any effect on firms' employment behaviour. Seniority rules exist in several countries, but consequences of seniority rules on firms' employment behaviour have not been examined previously. The “last-in-first-out” principle in Sweden was reformed in January 2001 such that employers with ten or fewer employees were allowed to exempt two workers from the seniority rule. Using an employer–employee unbalanced panel data for the period 1996–2005, we find that both hires and separations increased in small firms relative to large firms by 5%. This also implies that there were no effects on firms' net employment. Our results show that firms reacted to changes in the seniority rules, but we argue that the effects are not overwhelmingly large.