Covid-19-vaksinasjon blant innvandrarar frå Europa og i fødelanda deira

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Profiting from presenteeism? Effects of an enforced activation policy on firm profits

Activation requirements and graded benefits are strategies for reducing social insurance costs in comprehensive welfare states. In Norway, a policy of issuing graded rather than full time sickness absence certificates, is viewed as a strategy not just to reduce direct costs of sick pay but also to facilitate returns to work and reduce inflows to permanent disability. This paper analyzes effects of graded sick leave on firm profits, on average and across different firm groups. A series of panel data models are formulated to estimate the effects of grading on firm profits. In these models, grading is found to mitigate the negative effects of sickness absence on firm profit. A one percentage point increase in full time sickness absence leads to a 1.7% reduction in return on assets relative to the sample mean; this negative effect is reduced by 70% when absence is graded. Effects are robust to inclusion of firm fixed effects as well as time-varying proxies for labor demand.acceptedVersio

Leading Properties of the Business Tendency Survey

An important goal of macroeconomic policy is the stabilization of business cycles. For the conduct of policy, good predictions and identification of the business cycle are necessary. The industrial confidence indicator (ICI), obtained from the Business Tendency Survey (BTS) conducted by Statistics Norway among business leaders in the manufacturing sector, may be useful in this respect. This thesis aims to investigate the leading properties of the ICI with regard to economic activity in the manufacturing sector and the economy as a whole (the mainland economy). Specifically, I will seek to formulate a dynamic empirical model of the business cycle, with lags of the indicator as explanatory variables. The BTS contains information which may be analyzed in a variety of ways. When attempting to use data from this survey for the purpose of modeling and forecasting quantitative economic phenomena such as GDP growth, several issues should be taken into consideration. First, when answering the survey, respondents choose between a few alternative responses such as “better”, “worse” or “no change” without indicating the magnitude of the change. That is, results obtained from the survey are mainly qualitative in nature, while the phenomena we wish to explain are mainly quantitative. Second, indicators extracted from this survey, like the ICI, represent an aggregation of answers across firms which may not be optimal: information relevant to modeling may be lost. After a presentation of these concerns, the matter of model specification is discussed. As economic theory fails to give an unambiguous answer as to the preferred model, a general-to-specific modeling approach is used to arrive at the final model specifications. The general-to-specific procedure is carried out using an automated model selection feature of the module PCGive in OxMetrics, Autometrics. The general-to-specific approach leads to four final model specifications for the output gap and quarter-on-quarter growth in the manufacturing sector and the mainland economy. The ICI appears to be leading movements in output by two quarters. As the results are fairly similar regardless of how we measure economic activity, the analysis will focus on the models of the output gap. The long-run properties of the models are considered, and no obvious inconsistencies are found. Using these models and the latest available figures of GDP, one can make short-term forecasts of the output gap. Such predictions are of particular interest in the context of the financial crisis which has also impacted the Norwegian economy. The model predicts that the output gap is largest in absolute value (that is, farthest below trend) at 2009:2. For the manufacturing sector, output is predicted to return at trend level by 2009:4, while recovery is expected to be somewhat slower in the mainland economy

Spillovers from gatekeeping – Peer effects in absenteeism

We study peer effects in absenteeism among workplace colleagues. Gatekeeping is an essential task in many insurance systems. In this study we exploit exogenous shifts of general practitioners (GPs) occurring when physicians quit or retire. We find that these shifts induce changes in absenteeism for affected workers. By utilizing high-quality Norwegian matched employer-employee data with detailed individual information on certified sick leave during the period 2003–2012, we can study how the transfer of workers between GPs affects co-workers’ absenteeism. We identify strong causal positive peer effects in absenteeism: a one day change in focal worker sickness absence transfers to a 0.41 day shift in peer absence.Spillovers from gatekeeping – Peer effects in absenteeismacceptedVersio

Regional variation in health care utilization and mortality

Geographic variation in health care utilization has raised concerns of possible inefficiencies in health care supply, as differences are often not reflected in health outcomes. Using comprehensive Norwegian microdata, we exploit cross-region migration to analyze regional variation in health care utilization. Our results indicate that place factors account for half of the difference in utilization between high and low utilization regions, while the rest reflects patient demand. We further document heterogeneous impacts of place across socioeconomic groups. Place factors account for 75% of the regional utilization difference for high school dropouts, and 40% for high school graduates; for patients with a college degree, the impact of place is negligible. We find no statistically significant association between the estimated place effects and overall mortality. However, we document a negative association between place effects and utilization-intensive causes of death such as cancer, suggesting high-supply regions may achieve modestly improved health outcomes

Regional variation in health care utilization and mortality

Geographic variation in health care utilization has raised concerns of possible inefficiencies in health care supply, as differences are often not reflected in health outcomes. Using comprehensive Norwegian microdata, we exploit cross-region migration to analyze regional variation in health care utilization. Our results indicate that place factors account for half of the difference in utilization between high and low utilization regions, while the rest reflects patient demand. We further document heterogeneous impacts of place across socioeconomic groups. Place factors account for 75% of the regional utilization difference for high school dropouts, and 40% for high school graduates; for patients with a college degree, the impact of place is negligible. We find no statistically significant association between the estimated place effects and overall mortality. However, we document a negative association between place effects and utilization-intensive causes of death such as cancer, suggesting high-supply regions may achieve modestly improved health outcomes.publishedVersio

Regional variation in health care utilization and mortality

Geographic variation in health care utilization has raised concerns of possible inefficiencies in health care supply, as differences are often not reflected in health outcomes. Using comprehensive Norwegian microdata, we exploit cross-region migration to analyze regional variation in health care utilization. Our results indicate that place factors account for half of the difference in utilization between high and low utilization regions, while the rest reflects patient demand. We further document heterogeneous impacts of place across socioeconomic groups. Place factors account for 75% of the regional utilization difference for high school dropouts, and 40% for high school graduates; for patients with a college degree, the impact of place is negligible. We find no statistically significant association between the estimated place effects and overall mortality. However, we document a negative association between place effects and utilization-intensive causes of death such as cancer, suggesting high-supply regions may achieve modestly improved health outcomes