lars osberg - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by lars osberg
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Sep 28, 2012
have been enormously helpful. Errors remaining are the author's sole responsibility.
Why Did Unemployment Disappear from Official Macro-Economic Policy Discourse in Canada?
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Nov 1, 2011
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Aug 1, 2003
This paper develops an Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB) for the United States,
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Apr 1, 1995
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2000
This paper examines the level and distribution of equivalent after tax, after transfer money inco... more This paper examines the level and distribution of equivalent after tax, after transfer money income in Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany and Sweden using micro-data from the Luxembourg Income Study from 1969/70 to 1994/95. It concentrates on inequality within and between birth cohorts. At any point in time, less than 11% of aggregate income inequality is due to intergenerational inequality, but the experience of different birth cohorts over the period has varied widely across countries. The five countries studied differ in the trends observed in aggregate income, poverty, polarization and income inequality. In the USA and the UK, the incomes of the top decile of each cohort have risen dramatically, but the incomes of the bottom quintile have stagnated. In Canada and Sweden both the top and bottom deciles of each cohort have experienced similar trends. Germany is an intermediate case. Poverty trends are extremely sensitive to the distribution of the gains from growth-if only 10% of the income gains of the top decile of the UK and the USA had been transferred to the bottom decile, poverty in both countries in 1994/95 would have been substantially lower than in 1979, instead of substantially higher. The basic lesson is the diversity of income distribution trends to be observed in international data-and the consequent diversity of implications for political economy.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2002
Across OECD countries there are large differences in the average level and trend of working hours... more Across OECD countries there are large differences in the average level and trend of working hours and there is persuasive evidence that attitudes to paid employment, particularly for women, differ significantly. This paper therefore asks the question: "How much of the difference between countries in inequality of the distribution of money income can be explained by differing probabilities of paid employment?" Luxembourg Income Study data on the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France and Sweden is used to simulate the income distributions that other countries would have if they had the US (or German) female, and total, employment rate. In every case, measured trans-Atlantic differences in the inequality of money income increase -hence observed differences understate the extent of differences in well being. Put simply, in the US the less affluent have to work harder, and still end up relatively poorer, than in other countries.
The “Disappearance” of Involuntary Unemployment
Journal of Economic Issues, Sep 1, 1988
Unemployment is one of the outcomes that individuals experience in the labor market. Economics is... more Unemployment is one of the outcomes that individuals experience in the labor market. Economics is a discipline that usually seeks to explain individual outcomes as the result of the choices individuals make subject to the constraints they face. Some economic explanations of unemployment, have, therefore, chosen to view unemployment as arising from voluntary individual adjustments of labor supply, given wage rates-but others view unemployment as directly reflecting constraints on the quantity of labor that individuals can supply. Although economists may agree on the importance of "choice subject to constraint," they disagree on the fundamental question "Is the outcome of unemployment primarily to be explained by individual choices or by the quantity constraints to which those choices are subject?" The major theme of this essay is that the "mainstream" answer to this question has changed dramatically over the past few decades-as, indeed, labor economics as a subject area has changed. As P. J. McNulty and others have noted, mainstream labor economics has largely deserted its institutional roots and has become an area for applied micro-economic theorizing and sophisticated econometrics [McNulty 19801. Instead of inductive analysis based (at least partially) on primary
Unemployment and interindustry labour mobility in Canada in the 1980s
Applied Economics, Nov 1, 1991
Poverty in Canada and the USA: Measurement, Trends and Implications
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2000
Journal of Health Economics, Sep 1, 2019
Reform of the Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) sector in the late 1990s triggered massive lay... more Reform of the Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) sector in the late 1990s triggered massive layoffs (34 million employees) and marked the end of the "Iron Rice Bowl" guarantee of employment security for the remaining 67 million workers. An expanding international literature has documented the adverse health impacts of economic insecurity on adults, but has typically neglected children. This paper uses the natural experiment of SOE reform to explore the causal relationship between increased parental economic insecurity and children's BMI Z-score. Using provinceyear-level layoff rates and income loss from the layoffs, we estimate a generalised difference-in-differences model with child fixed effects and year fixed effects. For
Is it retirement or unemployment? Induced ‘retirement’ and constrained labour supply among older workers
Applied Economics, Apr 1, 1993
Journal of Economic Inequality, Jul 8, 2015
Politicians and pundits may obsess over Gross Domestic Product, but as Marc Fleurbaey and Didier ... more Politicians and pundits may obsess over Gross Domestic Product, but as Marc Fleurbaey and Didier Blanchet emphasize from the outset of this book, GDP is by itself a poor indicator of social progress. Their argument is that "even if economists cannot be accused of overselling the GDP, they should perhaps feel a special responsibility for helping to construct better alternatives". This erudite and well-written book therefore surveys the current literature in economics, asking whether a better measure of social well-being is now available and what types of social indicators should be constructed in future. Like a partially full (partially empty?) glass, the economics literature can be seen from multiple angles: some important questions have been addressed but many crucial issues also remain ignored. The limitations of the book therefore offer a window on the limitations of the larger economics literature which, to put a positive spin on the issue, illustrates the many future possibilities for creative new research on the measurement of social well-being. Dissatisfaction with GDP has produced a number of competing indicators of social well-being over the last 50 years. Chapter 1 provides a compressed overview, sorted into four typologies: subjective approaches, composite or hybrid indices, "dashboard" indicators and accounting/monetary approaches. The authors start with a useful discussion of how a composite index with fixed weights implicitly assumes substitutability among component sub-indices, which may imply that an unattractive monetary value is assigned to, for example, human life. The Human Development Index, in particular, assigns equal one third weights to linearly-scaled sub-indices summarizing population life expectancy, education and material living standards (for which the proxy is log(real GDP per capita)). In very poor countries a small absolute change in GDP can be a large percentage change. As a result, for poor countries quite small absolute changes in GDP have an equivalent impact on HDI as a year's increment in life expectancy, and the implied shadow dollar value of human life is (a) very low in some countries and (b) differs hugely across nations -conclusions which many observers might question. Nevertheless, despite the incommensurability of, for example, health and education, in everyday life social decisions have to be made which favour one or the other. Despite the reluctance many people feel in assigning dollar values to non-market aspects of life, social decisions typically also have implications for available market consumption. And the daily debates of contemporary politics clearly demonstrate that individual citizens disagree, sometimes vehemently, on social decisions and social priorities, i.e. on which dimensions
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Aug 1, 2020
This paper develops normative approaches for measuring individual-level income insecurity. Using ... more This paper develops normative approaches for measuring individual-level income insecurity. Using concepts derived from Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory, we build a suite of measures designed to capture various facets of psychologically distressing income risk. We present an application for the US and Germany from 1993-2013, employing conditionally heteroskedastic fixed-effects models to generate predictive densities for future incomes. Our results reveal much higher levels of income risk in the US relative to Germany, which can be mostly attributed to a higher level of autonomous, time-invariant volatility. State-by-state variations in liberal/conservative political administrations partially explain our results, and we find some evidence that trade exposure is a contributing factor in the US.
2014-06: The Effect of Economic Insecurity on Mental Health: Recent Evidence from Australian Panel Data (Working paper)
This paper estimates the impact of economic insecurity on the mental health of Australian adults.... more This paper estimates the impact of economic insecurity on the mental health of Australian adults. Taking microdata from the 2001-2011 HILDA panel survey, we produce a conceptually diverse set of insecurity measures and explore their relationships with the SF-36 mental health index. By using fixed effects models that control for unobservable heterogeneity, and by exploiting exogenous fluctuations in economic conditions as an identification strategy, we produce estimates that correct for endogeneity more thoroughly than previous works. Our results show that exposure to economic risks has consistently detrimental health effects. The main novelty comes from the breadth of risks that are found to be harmful. Job insecurity, financial dissatisfaction, reductions in income, an inability to meet standard expenditures and a lack of access to emergency funds all adversely affect health. This suggests that the common element of economic insecurity (rather than idiosyncratic phenomena associate...
The Distribution of Income, Wealth and Economic Security: The Impact of Unemployment Insurance Reforms in Canada
Sustainable Social Development
Canada’s Middle Class—Forever Further Behind?
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
This chapter highlights Canada’s distinctive trajectory of inequality and living standards. Inequ... more This chapter highlights Canada’s distinctive trajectory of inequality and living standards. Inequality rose markedly because real incomes grew strongly at the very top but stagnated for most of the rest of the income distribution until the resource-led boom of the 2000s. The importance of macroeconomic policy is brought out, in particular the role of monetary policy in choking off growth in order to keep inflation low, at the cost of substantial unemployment. The growth in incomes at the very top may be underestimated by the available estimates, while the weakening of redistribution via the tax and transfer systems has accentuated the trend to greater inequality. The consequences of a sustained ‘squeeze’ on middle incomes and living standards are spelled out and the implications for the future, in the absence of a major shift in the growth strategy, are discussed.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Sep 28, 2012
have been enormously helpful. Errors remaining are the author's sole responsibility.
Why Did Unemployment Disappear from Official Macro-Economic Policy Discourse in Canada?
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Nov 1, 2011
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Aug 1, 2003
This paper develops an Index of Economic Well-being (IEWB) for the United States,
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Apr 1, 1995
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2000
This paper examines the level and distribution of equivalent after tax, after transfer money inco... more This paper examines the level and distribution of equivalent after tax, after transfer money income in Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany and Sweden using micro-data from the Luxembourg Income Study from 1969/70 to 1994/95. It concentrates on inequality within and between birth cohorts. At any point in time, less than 11% of aggregate income inequality is due to intergenerational inequality, but the experience of different birth cohorts over the period has varied widely across countries. The five countries studied differ in the trends observed in aggregate income, poverty, polarization and income inequality. In the USA and the UK, the incomes of the top decile of each cohort have risen dramatically, but the incomes of the bottom quintile have stagnated. In Canada and Sweden both the top and bottom deciles of each cohort have experienced similar trends. Germany is an intermediate case. Poverty trends are extremely sensitive to the distribution of the gains from growth-if only 10% of the income gains of the top decile of the UK and the USA had been transferred to the bottom decile, poverty in both countries in 1994/95 would have been substantially lower than in 1979, instead of substantially higher. The basic lesson is the diversity of income distribution trends to be observed in international data-and the consequent diversity of implications for political economy.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2002
Across OECD countries there are large differences in the average level and trend of working hours... more Across OECD countries there are large differences in the average level and trend of working hours and there is persuasive evidence that attitudes to paid employment, particularly for women, differ significantly. This paper therefore asks the question: "How much of the difference between countries in inequality of the distribution of money income can be explained by differing probabilities of paid employment?" Luxembourg Income Study data on the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France and Sweden is used to simulate the income distributions that other countries would have if they had the US (or German) female, and total, employment rate. In every case, measured trans-Atlantic differences in the inequality of money income increase -hence observed differences understate the extent of differences in well being. Put simply, in the US the less affluent have to work harder, and still end up relatively poorer, than in other countries.
The “Disappearance” of Involuntary Unemployment
Journal of Economic Issues, Sep 1, 1988
Unemployment is one of the outcomes that individuals experience in the labor market. Economics is... more Unemployment is one of the outcomes that individuals experience in the labor market. Economics is a discipline that usually seeks to explain individual outcomes as the result of the choices individuals make subject to the constraints they face. Some economic explanations of unemployment, have, therefore, chosen to view unemployment as arising from voluntary individual adjustments of labor supply, given wage rates-but others view unemployment as directly reflecting constraints on the quantity of labor that individuals can supply. Although economists may agree on the importance of "choice subject to constraint," they disagree on the fundamental question "Is the outcome of unemployment primarily to be explained by individual choices or by the quantity constraints to which those choices are subject?" The major theme of this essay is that the "mainstream" answer to this question has changed dramatically over the past few decades-as, indeed, labor economics as a subject area has changed. As P. J. McNulty and others have noted, mainstream labor economics has largely deserted its institutional roots and has become an area for applied micro-economic theorizing and sophisticated econometrics [McNulty 19801. Instead of inductive analysis based (at least partially) on primary
Unemployment and interindustry labour mobility in Canada in the 1980s
Applied Economics, Nov 1, 1991
Poverty in Canada and the USA: Measurement, Trends and Implications
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2000
Journal of Health Economics, Sep 1, 2019
Reform of the Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) sector in the late 1990s triggered massive lay... more Reform of the Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) sector in the late 1990s triggered massive layoffs (34 million employees) and marked the end of the "Iron Rice Bowl" guarantee of employment security for the remaining 67 million workers. An expanding international literature has documented the adverse health impacts of economic insecurity on adults, but has typically neglected children. This paper uses the natural experiment of SOE reform to explore the causal relationship between increased parental economic insecurity and children's BMI Z-score. Using provinceyear-level layoff rates and income loss from the layoffs, we estimate a generalised difference-in-differences model with child fixed effects and year fixed effects. For
Is it retirement or unemployment? Induced ‘retirement’ and constrained labour supply among older workers
Applied Economics, Apr 1, 1993
Journal of Economic Inequality, Jul 8, 2015
Politicians and pundits may obsess over Gross Domestic Product, but as Marc Fleurbaey and Didier ... more Politicians and pundits may obsess over Gross Domestic Product, but as Marc Fleurbaey and Didier Blanchet emphasize from the outset of this book, GDP is by itself a poor indicator of social progress. Their argument is that "even if economists cannot be accused of overselling the GDP, they should perhaps feel a special responsibility for helping to construct better alternatives". This erudite and well-written book therefore surveys the current literature in economics, asking whether a better measure of social well-being is now available and what types of social indicators should be constructed in future. Like a partially full (partially empty?) glass, the economics literature can be seen from multiple angles: some important questions have been addressed but many crucial issues also remain ignored. The limitations of the book therefore offer a window on the limitations of the larger economics literature which, to put a positive spin on the issue, illustrates the many future possibilities for creative new research on the measurement of social well-being. Dissatisfaction with GDP has produced a number of competing indicators of social well-being over the last 50 years. Chapter 1 provides a compressed overview, sorted into four typologies: subjective approaches, composite or hybrid indices, "dashboard" indicators and accounting/monetary approaches. The authors start with a useful discussion of how a composite index with fixed weights implicitly assumes substitutability among component sub-indices, which may imply that an unattractive monetary value is assigned to, for example, human life. The Human Development Index, in particular, assigns equal one third weights to linearly-scaled sub-indices summarizing population life expectancy, education and material living standards (for which the proxy is log(real GDP per capita)). In very poor countries a small absolute change in GDP can be a large percentage change. As a result, for poor countries quite small absolute changes in GDP have an equivalent impact on HDI as a year's increment in life expectancy, and the implied shadow dollar value of human life is (a) very low in some countries and (b) differs hugely across nations -conclusions which many observers might question. Nevertheless, despite the incommensurability of, for example, health and education, in everyday life social decisions have to be made which favour one or the other. Despite the reluctance many people feel in assigning dollar values to non-market aspects of life, social decisions typically also have implications for available market consumption. And the daily debates of contemporary politics clearly demonstrate that individual citizens disagree, sometimes vehemently, on social decisions and social priorities, i.e. on which dimensions
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Aug 1, 2020
This paper develops normative approaches for measuring individual-level income insecurity. Using ... more This paper develops normative approaches for measuring individual-level income insecurity. Using concepts derived from Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory, we build a suite of measures designed to capture various facets of psychologically distressing income risk. We present an application for the US and Germany from 1993-2013, employing conditionally heteroskedastic fixed-effects models to generate predictive densities for future incomes. Our results reveal much higher levels of income risk in the US relative to Germany, which can be mostly attributed to a higher level of autonomous, time-invariant volatility. State-by-state variations in liberal/conservative political administrations partially explain our results, and we find some evidence that trade exposure is a contributing factor in the US.
2014-06: The Effect of Economic Insecurity on Mental Health: Recent Evidence from Australian Panel Data (Working paper)
This paper estimates the impact of economic insecurity on the mental health of Australian adults.... more This paper estimates the impact of economic insecurity on the mental health of Australian adults. Taking microdata from the 2001-2011 HILDA panel survey, we produce a conceptually diverse set of insecurity measures and explore their relationships with the SF-36 mental health index. By using fixed effects models that control for unobservable heterogeneity, and by exploiting exogenous fluctuations in economic conditions as an identification strategy, we produce estimates that correct for endogeneity more thoroughly than previous works. Our results show that exposure to economic risks has consistently detrimental health effects. The main novelty comes from the breadth of risks that are found to be harmful. Job insecurity, financial dissatisfaction, reductions in income, an inability to meet standard expenditures and a lack of access to emergency funds all adversely affect health. This suggests that the common element of economic insecurity (rather than idiosyncratic phenomena associate...
The Distribution of Income, Wealth and Economic Security: The Impact of Unemployment Insurance Reforms in Canada
Sustainable Social Development
Canada’s Middle Class—Forever Further Behind?
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
This chapter highlights Canada’s distinctive trajectory of inequality and living standards. Inequ... more This chapter highlights Canada’s distinctive trajectory of inequality and living standards. Inequality rose markedly because real incomes grew strongly at the very top but stagnated for most of the rest of the income distribution until the resource-led boom of the 2000s. The importance of macroeconomic policy is brought out, in particular the role of monetary policy in choking off growth in order to keep inflation low, at the cost of substantial unemployment. The growth in incomes at the very top may be underestimated by the available estimates, while the weakening of redistribution via the tax and transfer systems has accentuated the trend to greater inequality. The consequences of a sustained ‘squeeze’ on middle incomes and living standards are spelled out and the implications for the future, in the absence of a major shift in the growth strategy, are discussed.