About me

I am a researcher at The Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU). I am also affiliated with the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies. I defended my PhD thesis Job Loss: Consequences and Labor Market Policy at Uppsala University for which I received an honorable mention in the Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Arnbergska Prize.

My main research interests lies first and foremost within labor economics and applied econometrics. Much of my research focuses on questions surrounding job loss and unemployment; its consequences for individual workers and how various labor market polices could be used and affect subsequent labor market outcomes.

Research interests: Labor economics, Applied econometrics, Public economics

Research


Reconsidering the Cost of Job Loss: Evidence from Redundancies and Mass Layoffs

submitted

  [Working Paper]   [Policy report (Swedish)]
Coverage : Wall Street Journal , Sveriges Radio , Forskning , Kvalitetsmagasinet , VDtidningen , Ekonomiekot Extra

This paper studies the consequences of job loss. While previous literature has relied on mass layoffs and plant closures for identification, I exploit discontinuities in the likelihood of displacement generated by a last-in-first-out rule used at layoffs in Sweden. Matching data on individual layoff notifications to administrative records, I find that permanent earnings losses are only found among workers losing their job in mass layoffs, whereas workers displaced in smaller layoffs fully recover. Auxiliary analysis suggests that large layoffs increase exposure to non-employment, prolong unemployment and cause workers to leave the labor force, conceivably by affecting the local labor market.


Mandatory Notice of Layoff, Job Search, and Efficiency

with Peter Fredriksson, Arash Nekoei and David Seim
R&R for Quarterly Journal of Economics (2:nd round)

  [Working paper]
Coverage : RJ

In all OECD countries, Mandatory Notice (MN) policies require firms to inform workers in advance of layoff. Notification encourages workers to search for a new job while still employed. In theory, MN allows workers to avoid unemployment and find better jobs, 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 reduced work incentives decrease current production. Should the production losses outweigh future gains, Coasian bargaining predicts that firms offer severance instead of adhering to MN – thus enhancing the production efficiency of the policy. With Coasian bargaining, the efficiency loss of MN solely comes from delayed separation of unproductive job matches. We test these predictions using novel Swedish administrative data on layoff notifications. We first show that workers eligible for longer mandated notice are not only notified in advance, but also receive larger severance. As a result, they experience shorter non-employment spells and find better-paying jobs. By disentangling the overall effect of MN, we show that earlier notification leads workers to engage in fewer job search activities while still finding better-paying jobs without delay. Advance notice thus replaces job search while unemployed with more effective search while employed. We then gauge the production loss of MN by estimating the impact of notice on workers’ productivity and the magnitude of the loss due to delayed separations. In the final step, we evaluate the overall efficiency implications of MN by combining the empirical estimates of production gains and losses of MN using our theory. In our setting, the benefits of MN outweigh the costs.


The Role of Caseworkers: Job Finding, Job Quality and Determinants of Value-Added

with Martin Söderström and Johan Vikström
R&R for Journal of European Economic Association NEW VERSION

  [Working paper]   [Policy report (Swedish)]   [Outreach report (Swedish)]
Coverage : RJ , Forskning , Sveriges Radio , Akademikern , Publikt , Aftonbladet , Kvalitetsmagasinet

We study the importance of caseworkers and their role in supporting unemployed job seekers. By exploiting as-if random variation, arising from job seekers in Sweden being assigned to caseworkers based on their date of birth, we estimate caseworker value-added along several dimensions. We show that caseworkers have meaningful effects on both job seekers' time in unemployment and subsequent job quality. These effects also impact job seekers' long-run outcomes and are heterogeneous across groups of job seekers. We find only weak trade-offs between different dimensions of value added. Leveraging detailed administrative data on both caseworkers and job seekers, we document that experienced caseworkers perform better than their less experienced counterparts. Caseworker work-strategies are important in determining value added, and matching caseworkers to job seekers based on previous labor-market experiences lead to better outcomes.


Extended Unemployment Benefits and the Hazard to Employment

  [Working paper]   [Policy report (Swedish)]
Coverage : Arbetsvärlden , Dagens Arena , Arbetet

Previous studies estimating the effect of generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) on unemployment duration has found that as job-seekers approach benefit exhaustion the probability of leaving unemployment increases sharply. Such ``spikes'' in the hazard rate has generally been interpreted as shirking among job-seekers timing their employment to coincide with benefit exhaustion. This, however, has been called into question by Card et al. (2007b) who claim that such spikes rather reflect flight out of the labor force as benefits run out. This paper revisits this debate by studying a 30 week UI benefit extension in Sweden and its effects on unemployment duration, duration on UI as well as the timing of employment. As the UI extension is predicated upon a job-seeker having a child below the age of 18 at the time of regular UI exhaustion this provides quasi-experimental variation which I exploit using a regression discontinuity design. I find that although increasing potential UI duration by 30 weeks increases actual take up by about 2.7 weeks, overall duration in unemployment and the probability of employment is largely unaffected. Moreover, I find no evidence of job-seekers manipulating the hazard to employment such that it coincides with UI benefit exhaustion.



Ongoing projects

How much should we trust mass layoff estimates?
The effect of locally provided job search support for the unemployed
Job search behavior over the spell: Evidence from administrative data

Curriculum Viate

Contact Me