Documents Carlsen, Fredrik 3 results

"European economies display large variations in unemployment rates across regions as well as between education groups. Insufficient labour mobility is widely believed to contribute to higher regional disparities and overall unemployment, but few studies have compared mobility responses of different education groups to regional shocks. This paper employs administrative registers covering the entire Norwegian population to compute annual time series from 1994 to 2004 of migration flows and regional labour market conditions by education level for 90 travel-to-work areas. We find that regional disparities in unemployment rates are decreasing in education level, whereas the response of migration flows to regional unemployment shocks is increasing in education level. The results suggest that low regional mobility of low-educated workers may contribute to higher regional disparities and higher overall unemployment among the low educated."

"Empirical studies of interregional mobility routinely use regional unemployment differentials to characterize economic incentives to move between regions. In this paper, we present a new regional labour market indicator computed from survey data in which respondents are asked to evaluate local employment opportunities in their resident municipality and surroundings. The subjective measures of satisfaction with local employment opportunities have positive and significant impact on interregional migration flows, also when controlling for traditional measures of regional labour market conditions, including the regional unemployment rate. Contrary to most European studies, we find that regional labour market conditions have a strong effect on interregional migration flows."

"OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the association between organizational downsizing and purchases of prescribed drugs by private sector employees in Norway.
METHODS: A natural experiment was constructed using individual-level employer and employee data linked to the national prescription database for the period 2004–2012. The study population comprised 144 089 employees who had been exposed to major downsizing in the same period. Random effects logistic regression models were used to investigate relative changes in drug purchases (antidepressants, hypnotics/sedatives, anxiolytics, and anti-psychotics, as well as anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, cardiovascular, and thyroid drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids, and analgesics/antipyretics) in the five-year-period before and after exposure to downsizing.
RESULTS: Compared with the situation three years before exposure, the odds ratios (OR) of purchasing psychotropic drugs one year after exposure increased for antidepressants (OR 1.44, 95% CI 1.34–1.55), hypnotics/sedatives (OR 1.39, 95% CI 1.29–1.49), anxiolytics (OR 1.32, 95% CI 1.22–1.43), and antipsychotics (OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.19–1.52). Similar associations were found for cardiovascular, anti-diabetic, and thyroid drugs. Stratified analyses showed that the odds of purchasing psychotropic, anti-diabetic, and cardiovascular drugs in the years around downsizing was more pronounced in men compared with women. Elevated odds were also found for employees in the oldest age group and those with less than tertiary education.
CONCLUSIONS: Exposure to organizational downsizing increased the odds of purchasing prescribed psychotropic, cardiovascular, anti-diabetic, and thyroid drugs. The clinical implications of these results might be systematic involvement from medical personnel and occupational health services in workforce reduction processes."