Documents Mogstad, Magne 4 results

"There is a heated debate in many European countries about a move towards a welfare system that increases the incentives for lone mothers to move off welfare and into work. We analyze the consequences of a major Norwegian workfare reform of the generous welfare system for lone mothers. Our difference-in-differences estimates show that the policy changes were successful in improving labor market attachment and increasing disposable income of new lone mothers. By contrast, the reform led to a substantial decrease in disposable income and a significant increase in poverty among persistent lone mothers, because a sizeable group was unable to offset the loss of out-of-work welfare benefits with gains in earnings. This suggests that the desired effects of the workfare reform were associated with the side-effects of income loss and increased poverty among a substantial number of lone mothers with insurmountable employment barriers. This finding stands in stark contrast to evidence from similar policy changes in Canada, the UK, and the US, and underscores that policymakers from other developed countries should be cautious when drawing lessons from the successful welfare reforms implemented in Anglo-Saxon countries. "

"Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards? Economists and policymakers are keenly interested in this question – especially lately, as worker representation is widely promoted as an important way to ensure the interests and views of the workers. To investigate this question, we apply a variety of research designs to administrative data from Norway. We find that a worker is paid more and faces less earnings risk if she gets a job in a firm with worker representation on the corporate board. However, these gains in wages and declines in earnings risk are not caused by worker representation per se. Instead, the wage premium and reduced earnings risk reflect that firms with worker representation are likely to be larger and unionized, and that larger and unionized firms tend to both pay a premium and provide better insurance to workers against fluctuations in firm performance. Conditional on the firm's size and unionization rate, worker representation has little if any effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that while workers may indeed benefit from being employed in firms with worker representation, they would not benefit from legislation mandating worker representation on corporate boards."

"In this article, we document and discuss salient features of collective bargaining systems in the OECD countries, with the goal of debunking some misconceptions and myths and revitalizing the general interest in wage setting and collective bargaining. We hope that such an interest may help close the gap between how economists tend to model wage setting and how wages are actually set. Canonical models of competitive labor markets, monopsony, and search and matching all assume a decentralized wage setting where individual firms and workers determine wages. In most advanced economies, however, it is common that firms or employer associations bargain with unions over wages, producing collective bargaining systems. We show that the characteristics of these systems vary in important ways across advanced economies, with regards to both the scope and the structure of collective bargaining."