Denna specialstudie analyserar utifrån rådande forskningsläge hur kortare lagstadgadarbetstid påverkar sysselsättning och BNP per invånare. Specialstudien tar även upphälsoeffekter av kortare arbetstid och hur kortare arbetstid kan hanteras inom ramenför den svenska avtalsmodellen.

This paper analyzes consumption to evaluate the distributional effects of pension reforms. Using Swedish administrative data, we show that on average, workers who retire earlier consume less while retired and experience larger drops in consumption around retirement. Interpreted via a theoretical model, these findings imply that reforms incentivizing later retirement incur a substantial consumption smoothing cost. Turning to other features of pension policy, we find that reforms that redistribute based on early-career labor supply would have opposite-signed redistributive effects, while differentiating on wealth may help to target pension benefits toward those who are vulnerable to larger drops in consumption around retirement. 

Using administrative tax and military records, we show that cognitive ability is more strongly associated with capital income than with labor income. This result holds across intensive and extensive margins, across different income types, and after controlling for education, occupation, inheritance, and parental background. Higher ability individuals save more, are better at selecting high-return stocks, hold more risky assets, and are less likely to live hand-to-mouth. Capital market returns are higher for cognitive ability than for non-cognitive skills, and the difference is stable over time. Rising capital shares, fueled by technological progress, could therefore exacerbate cognitive ability-based economic inequality.

This paper reviews some recent findings regarding unemployment and unemployment insurance in particular, drawing on comprehensive administrative data from Sweden. Firstly, it explores the value of unemployment insurance, revealing that individuals value UI more than previously thought. Secondly, it examines the nature of unemployment, demonstrating that long-term unemployment is predictable and challenging preconceived notions on how unemployment can be a trap. Lastly, it explores the possibility of providing choice in unemployment insurance, finding limited adverse selection. Based on these pieces of evidence, we draw implications for the expansion of UI coverage for non-standard workers.

This paper measures consumption expenditures using registry data on income and asset holdings in Sweden. We show how a registry-based measure complements traditional survey measures of consumption and can alleviate some critical limitations. We describe the construction of our measure, which builds on prior work and exploits the identity coming from the household budget constraint between consumption expenditures and income net of savings. We demonstrate the value of the registry-based measure to study consumption responses to shocks, also relative to surveyed consumption. In our application to health shocks, we find that Swedish household experience permanent earning drops, but generous social transfers provide substantial consumption smoothing. We document important heterogeneity in consumption responses and the limited role for private means.

There is an ongoing debate in OECD countries on how to provide social insurance coverage for non-standard workers. A possible solution is government subsidised voluntary social insurance. Such programs are common in Sweden. However, voluntary social insurance programs for non-standard workers – notably unemployment insurance – face several challenges that need to be addressed for such programs to function satisfactorily. The most salient is how the risk of voluntary quits is managed. This chapter reviews how Swedish social insurance programs square with non-standard work arrangements. It finds that the bar to access voluntary unemployment insurance is higher for non-standard workers, mainly since it is hard to establish that a job loss is involuntary. Non-standard workers are also not covered in collective bargained social insurance schemes, most notably occupational pensions, which account for 25% of total pensions. A further conclusion is that for voluntary programs to work, the rate of subsidies provided by the government must be sufficiently high. Data from Sweden show that otherwise premiums will be high causing insurance coverage to fall.

This paper provides a simple, yet robust framework to evaluate the time profile of benefits paid during an unemployment spell. We derive sufficient-statistics formulae capturing the marginal insurance value and incentive costs of unemployment benefits paid at different times during a spell. Our approach allows us to revisit separate arguments for inclining or declining profiles put forward in the theoretical literature and to identify welfare-improving changes in the benefit profile that account for all relevant arguments jointly. For the empirical implementation, we use administrative data on unemployment, linked to data on consumption, income, and wealth in Sweden. First, we exploit duration-dependent kinks in the replacement rate and find that, if anything, the moral hazard cost of benefits is larger when paid earlier in the spell. Second, we find that the drop in consumption affecting the insurance value of benefits is large from the start of the spell, but further increases throughout the spell. In trading off insurance and incentives, our analysis suggests that the flat benefit profile in Sweden has been too generous overall. However, both from the insurance and the incentives side, we find no evidence to support the introduction of a declining tilt in the profile.