Labour supply incentives, income support systems and taxes in Sweden

Comparing Sweden to other EU countries, labour force participation rates of older individuals and females are high. These facts are consistent with the idea that institutional design matters: access to child care, paid parental leave, and a tax system with individual rather than household income taxation, probably explain a significant fraction of the high female participation rate; and the evidence suggests that the design of pension systems has an impact on the labour force participation of the elderly. Active labour market policies may contribute to high labour force participation, but cannot be relied on as a major means of raising employment and participation in the long run.Labour supply; taxes; income support systems

Detention by Any Other Name

An unaffordable bail requirement has precisely the same effect as an order of pretrial detention: the accused person is jailed pending trial. It follows as a logical matter that an order requiring an unaffordable bail bond as a condition of release should be subject to the same substantive and procedural protections as an order denying bail altogether. Yet this has not been the practice. This Article lays out the logical and legal case for the proposition that an order that functionally imposes detention must be treated as an order of detention. It addresses counterarguments and complexities, including both empirical and normative ambiguity in the concept of “unaffordable” bail. It explains in practical terms what it would entail for a court system to treat unaffordable bail as a detention order. One hurdle is that both legal and policy standards for pretrial detention are currently in flux. Recognizing unaffordable bail as a detention order foregrounds the question of when pretrial detention is justified. This is the key question the bail reform movement must now confront

Income support systems, labour supply incentives and employment – some cross-country evidence

This paper summarizes a set of expert reports commissioned by the IFAU. The expert reports cover Estonia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These countries represent range of welfare states, both in terms of scope and design. And in each country there are interesting experiences from which other countries may learn. The overall objective is to identify policy tools that help generate sustained increases in employment in the long run. Therefore, we focus on policies that improve the incentives for labour force participation and reduce the barriers to participation.Labour force participation; employment; income support; long-run sustainability

Direct Displacement Effects of Labour Market Programmes: The Case of Sweden

Using a panel of 260 Swedish municipalities over the period 1987-1996, this paper investigates the direct displacement effects of active labour market programmes (ALMPs). Compared to earlier studies on this topic, we have more and better data. From our GMM estimations, we find that (i) there are direct displacement effects from those ALMPs that generate subsidised labour (in the order of approximately 65 percent), but there seems to be no (significant) displacement effects from training, (ii) most ALMPs seem to increase labour force participation, and (iii) the adjustment to the optimal level of employment seems to be sluggish. A consequence of (ii) is that the earlier studies have overstated the displacement effects (since they normalised with the labour force).Labour market programmes; Displacement effects; GMM estimation

Random and stock-flow models of labour market matching - Swedish evidence

In this paper we estimate aggregate matching functions taking advantage of a rich data base that enables us to compute observations on the variables in the matching function at (virtually) any frequency to assess the importance of the time aggregation problem. We also generate stocks, outflows and inflows of vacancies and job seekers to shed light on the importance of stock-slow matching. Finally, we assess the contribution of labour market programme participants to matching. Our evidence rejects random matching. More precisely, we find that a non-trivial fraction of new job seekers match instantly (within the first week), that stocks of "old" vacancies and job seekers do not contribute significantly to matching and that the inflow of vacancies matches with the lagged stock of job seekers. Our results also suggest that labour market programme participants contribute to matching to a lesser extent than openly unemployed job seekers. We also find that the use of lagged stocks as right-hand side variables in matching functions (i.e., ignoring the within-period inflow of job seekers and vacancies) gives lower estimates of matching elasicities and that this is more pronounced the lower the measurement frequency.Stock flow matchíng; time aggregation

Direct displacement effects of labour market programmes: the case of Sweden

Using a panel of 260 Swedish municipalities over the period 1987-1996, this paper investigates the direct displacement effects of active labour market programmes (ALMPs). Compared to earlier studies on this topic, we have more and better data. From our GMM estimations, we find that (i) there are direct displacement effects from those ALMPs that generate subsidised labour (in the order of approximately 65 percent), but there seems to be no (significant) displacement effects from training, (ii) most ALMPs seem to increase labour force participation, and (iii) the adjustment to the optimal level of employment seems to be sluggish. A consequence of (ii) is that the earlier studies have overstated the displacement effects (since they nomalised with the labour force).Labour market programmes; Displacement effects; GMM estimation

REDUCTION OF FAECAL MICROBIOLOGICAL INDICATORS IN DIFFERENT COMPOST TOILETS

Large variations in numbers of faecal indicator bacteria were found irrespective of the storage time of collected human faeces. Little heat seemed generated from composting processes when bin units were stored locally in households. The low reduction in microbiological parameters and very limited temperature increase were generally corroborated by the results obtained in experiment 2 when pathogen indicators were added to thoroughly mixed faecal matter. Even though Salmonella died of rapidly the other faecal bacterial indicators survived in large numbers. We conclude, that the collection and storage of human faeces in the closed plastic bins studied here is associated with only little temperature increase and subsequent reduction in faecal bacterial indicators and pathogens. Thus, the bin units do not seem especially suitable for composting and hygienisation of human faece

Analytical solution for heat conduction due to a moving Gaussian heat flux with piecewise constant parameters

We provide an analytical solution of the heat equation in the half-space subject to a moving Gaussian heat flux with piecewise constant parameters. The solution is of interest in powder bed fusion applications where these parameters can be used to control the conduction of heat due to a scanning beam of concentrated energy. The analytical solution is written in a dimensionless form as a sum of integrals over (dimensionless) time. For the numerical computation of these integrals we suggest a quadrature scheme that utilizes pre-calculated look-up tables for the required quadrature orders. Such a scheme is efficient because the required quadrature orders are strongly dependent on the parameters in the heat flux. The possibilities of using the obtained computational technique for the control and optimization of powder bed fusion processes are discussed