Migration and employment status during the turbulent nineties in Sweden

This paper analyses the migration between 109 local labour markets in Sweden during the 1990s. This decade seems to differ a lot from earlier decades with respect to migration patterns – the industrial migration pattern has been substituted by a post-industrial one. This means also that the connection to the labour market situation has diminished as an explaining factor for the migration choices. Most of the people in the ‘working ages’ move between local labour markets for other reasons than job opportunities. In this paper a lot of regressions are done with respect to the movers’ employment status before and after migration. Four the years 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1997 – and the analyses include differing categories as employed, unemployed, students and people outside these groups. The net-migration between the local labour markets are also analysed for the same groups and the same ‘explaining’ variables are used. From these cross-section analyses it seems obvious that the motives are different for various categories and that they also differ with respect to the economic situation.

Wage differences between women and men in Sweden - the impact of skill mismatch

Since the early 2000s regional enlargement (“regionförstoring”) has become an important objective in the Swedish regional policy. Smaller regions are intended to be functionally integrated into larger neighbours through intensified commuting. This strive is facilitated by the fact that the coveted process seems self-propelled and already running. The number of functional regions is reported to have halved during the three last decades of the 20th century and are expected to half again until 2030. However, it has been difficult to confirm this fast development in other data. In this paper a set of explanations to this seemingly contradictory condition are suggested. The conclusion is that the Swedish regional enlargement partly might be fictitious, an effect of flaws and errors in the data and the way used to measure the process. The unfortunate message is that regional enlargement might not be such an easily practicable way to regional development it seems to be and that the assumption of a future Sweden of only 55-60 functional regions might have defective grounds.gender differences in wage; overeducation; undereducation

Wage differences between women and men in Sweden - the impact of skill mismatch

We investigate skill mismatch and its impact on gender differences in wage gap and in returns to education in Sweden 1993 to 2002.Women are more likely to have more formal education than what is normally required for their occupation (overeducation), while men are more likely to have less (undereducation).Over- and undereducation contribute far more to the gender wage gap than years of schooling and work experience. In decompositions, adjusting for skill mismatch decreases the gender wage gap by between one tenth and one sixth. This is roughly a third to a half as much as is accounted for by segregation by industry. Thus, taking skill mismatch into account is essential for the analysis of gender wage differentiation, even though it does not alter the result that the estimated returns to education are smaller for women than for men in Sweden.Gender differentials; discrimination; over- and undereducation

Strategic Investments in the Pulp and Paper Industry: A Count Data Regression Analysis

This paper analyses the effects of price and market size variables on the investment propensities in the pulp and paper industry. A panel of 15 European countries in the time period 1984 - 1997 is used in the regression analysis. We find the wages, the US/ECU exchange rate, the price of paper and the installed production capacity to be the main determinants of strategic investments in this industry. Our measure of market size have no - or only very small - effects.Lumpy investments; Prices; Market size; Agglomeration; Distance; Investment determinants

Mobile unemployment in a post-industrial society: The case of Sweden

Since the early 90s, every region in Sweden has been struck by high unemployment, especially among young persons. In the same period, there has been an overrepresentation of unemployed among inter-regional migrants. Increasingly, however, this mobility does not lead to employment. Yet, there are largely economic factors explaining this mobility. There seems to be a dual spatial pattern of this phenomenon. Preferably, unemployed migrate to (a) metropolitan regions and to (b) rural areas. This indicates that the phenomenon is multifaceted. Mobile unemployed have different backgrounds and different aspirations. Unemployed migrants to rural areas are predominantly low cost seekers who do not look for a regular job any longer. Unemployed migrants to metropolitan regions are to a large extent recent immigrants and/or young persons attracted by the informal segments of the urban labor market. The aim of the paper is to describe emerging patterns of inter-regional migration of unemployed, to analyze the socio-economic careers of different migrant groups, and to analyze factors leading to mobile unemployment. The factors analyzed include changes in the welfare system and in labor market policy. Finally, the paper will discuss the regional economic consequences of the emerging pattern and the policy implications.

English translations as a clue to the structure of Swedish över.

Abstract not availabl

Measuring Rhythm: A Context-Sensitive Approach

[1] In this article I present some considerations on the measuring of musical rhythm with earlier research on rhythm and timing in Scandinavian traditional fiddle music as a point of reference (Ahlbäck, 1995; Bengtsson. 1974; Blom, 1981, 1993; Johansson, 2010a, 2010b, 2015; Kvifte, 1999, 2004; Waadeland,2000). The styles of music in question are called pols, springar or polska and often share the feature of being rhythmically irregular with beats of different (asymmetrical triple meter with long-average-short or short-long-average beat cycles) and varying duration.1 In addition, the fiddle (here also including the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle) produces sound images which are particularly challenging to account for in terms of rhythmic onsets or attack points. These features provide an interesting point of departure for discussing the merits of different approaches to measuring rhythm, here understood as the systematic determination of the duration of rhythmic units (measures, beats and individual notes/tones/sounds). Such determination equals the identification of attacks/onsets and the subsequent measurement of inter-onset intervals (IOIs) (Danielson, 2010). It is important to note that IOIs represent but one out of several aspects, or outputs, of timing behavior (see below), which implies that possibilities for generalization should be defined accordingly