Documents University of Aarhus 6 results

"The Scandinavian countries have achieved both a high level of living standard (measured by e.g. average income) and an egalitarian outcome (measured by e.g. income inequality) despite a very large public sector and thus a large tax burden (about 50 % of GDP). The Scandinavian cluster thus poses a challenge to the standard view on the tradeoff between efficiency and equity. How come that the Scandinavian countries have been able to achieve high equality without much sacrifice of efficiency in terms of income? This paper addresses this question with the outset in recent work stressing the insurance aspect of the welfare state. A broad interpretation of the Scandinavian welfare model in terms of social insurance or common pool aspects is given. The effects of social insurance are discussed and the potential incentive problems arising in a common pool arrangement are argued to be mitigated by a number of counteracting mechanisms. Issues in policy design and the political economy of the welfare state are also discussed."

"It was intended to conduct two measurement campaigns, running totally four months, including measurement of number and size-distribution of ultrafine particles at the measurement station at the apron (Gate B4), and at one of the two monitoring stations at Copenhagen Airport (Fig. 1). The plan was to carry out the campaigns spring and fall 2010. However, because of large-scale rebuilding at the gates B2 and B4, spring 2010, the spring measurement campaign was postponed, and the two measurement campaigns combined into a joint campaign in fall 2010. The report starts off with a short review of some of the most important particle fractions, included in the total investigation of particle pollution. Secondly, results of measurements of number and size-distribution of ultrafine particles at the airport apron and at the monitoring station are presented, thirdly, results of literature studies are included, and finally there is a conclusion. Results as well as conclusions are preliminary, since Project 1 and 2 are not yet finished."

"In this paper we look at migration flows from 10 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) to 5 Nordic countries over the years 1985 - 2007. We exploit a natural experiment that arose from the fact that while Sweden opened its labour market from the day one of the 2004 EU enlargement, and Finland and Iceland from year 2006, the other Nordic countries chose a transition period in relation to the "new" EU members. The results based on a differences-in-differences estimator show that the estimated effect of the opening of the Swedish, Finnish and Icelandic labour markets on migration from the CEECs that entered the EU in 2004 is not significantly different from zero. However, the effect of the opening of the Swedish and Finnish labour markets in 2007 on migration from the 2007 EU entrants, Bulgaria and Romania, is significantly positive. Further, we are interested in the overall effect of the "EU entry" on migration. Therefore we look at migration flows from CEECs during the first round of EU enlargement towards the East in 2004 and compare them with migration flows from Bulgaria and Romania. The estimated effect from our D-in-D analyses is positive and significant in all model specifications."

"Unemployment is at a low and stable level in Denmark. This achievement is often attributed to the so-called flexicurity model combining flexible hiring and firing rules for employers with income security for employees. Whatever virtues this model may have, a low and stable unemployment rate is not automatically among them since the basic flexicurity properties were also in place during the
1970s and 1980s where high and persistent unemployment was prevalent. Labour market performance has changed due to a series of reforms during the 1990s, the main thrust of which were a shift from a passive focus of labour market policies to a more active focus on job search and employment. The policy tightened eligibility for unemployment benefits and their duration as well as introduced workfare elements into unemployment insurance and social policies in general.
Thereby policy makers attempted to strengthen the incentive structure without taking resort to general benefit reductions. We argue that the workfare policies have played an important role running primarily via motivation/threat and wage effects. However, active labour market policies are resource demanding, and although the workfare reforms have improved cost effectiveness, there
is still an issue as to whether the resources going into active labour market policies are used efficiently."