• Building Bridges and Widening Gaps: Efficiency Gains and Equity Concerns of Labor Market Expansions 

      Bütikofer, Aline; Løken, Katrine V.; Willén, Alexander (DP SAM;19/2019, Working paper, 2019-10-20)
      We exploit the opening of a large bridge to study how access to a larger labor market affects economic efficiency, and how these potential efficiency gains are distributed across workers. The bridge we study connected the ...
    • The Career Effects of Union Membership 

      Dodini, Samuel; Salvanes, Kjell G.; Willén, Alexander; Zhu, Li (SAM DP;12/2023, Working paper, 2023-05)
      We combine exogenous variation in union membership with detailed administrative data and a novel field survey to estimate the career effects of labor union membership. In the survey, we show how workers perceive the role ...
    • Does Increasing Risk Widen Gender Gaps? 

      Hirshman, Samuel D.; Willén, Alexander (SAM DP;20/2022, Working paper, 2022-12)
      We examine the response to an exogenous change in the risk profile of an important educational choice – requesting a regrade. We demonstrate how ostensibly gender-neutral policies can generate gaps across men and women ...
    • Does Your Doctor Matter? Doctor Quality and Patient Outcomes 

      Ginja, Rita; Riise, Julie; Willage, Barton; Willén, Alexander (SAM DP;08/2022, Working paper, 2022-06)
      We estimate doctor value-added and provide evidence on the distribution of physician quality in an entire country, combining rich population-wide register data with random assignment of patients to general practitioners ...
    • The Effect of Labor Market Competition on Firms, Workers, and Communities 

      Dodini, Samuel; Løken, Katrine; Willén, Alexander (SAM DP;17/2022, Working paper, 2022-11)
      This paper isolates the impact of labor market competition on firms, workers, and communities. A shock to labor mobility from Sweden to Norway caused a substantial increase in labor competition for Swedish firms on the ...
    • The Effect of Labor Market Shocks Across the Life Cycle 

      Salvanes, Kjell G.; Willage, Barton; Willén, Alexander (SAM DP;21/2021, Working paper, 2021-12)
      Adverse economic shocks occur frequently and may cause individuals to reevaluate key life decisions in ways that have lasting consequences for themselves and the broader economy. These life decisions are fundamentally tied ...
    • Employment Protection and Child Development 

      Willén, Alexander; Willage, Barton; Riise, Julie (SAM DP;19/2022, Working paper, 2022-12)
      This paper exploits conditional random assignment of patients to general practitioners to calculate a leniency measure of paid sick leave certification. We link these data to information on the human capital development ...
    • How Do Firms Respond to Unions? 

      Dodini, Samuel; Stansbury, Anna; Willén, Alexander (DP SAM;25/2023, Working paper, 2023-12-22)
      This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the margins along which firms in Norway respond to increased union density, using legislative changes in the tax deductibility of union dues as a quasi-exogenous shock to ...
    • Interactions in Public Policies: Spousal Responses and Program Spillovers of Welfare Reforms 

      Johnsen, Julian Vedeler; Vaage, Kjell; Willén, Alexander (DP SAM;20/2020, Working paper, 2020-09)
      Anticipating the labor market effects of welfare reforms is difficult due to public policy interactions across programs and among household members. Specifically, changes to one program may affect individual take-up of ...
    • Oh Mother: The Neglected Impact of School Disruptions 

      Jaume, David; Willén, Alexander (DP SAM;30/2018, Working paper, 2018-12)
      Temporary school closures (TSC) represent a major challenge to policymakers across the globe due to their potential impact on instructional time and student achievement. A neglected but equally important question relates ...
    • Parenthood and the Gender Gap in Commuting 

      Bütikofer, Aline; Karadakic, René; Willén, Alexander (SAM DP;11/2023, Working paper, 2023-05)
      Childbirth increases the opportunity cost of commuting and makes it difficult for both parents to work far away from home. Using detailed Norwegian register data, we show that the commuting patterns of men and women diverge ...
    • Postpartum Job Loss: Transitory Effect on Mothers, Long-run Damage to Children 

      Willage, Barton; Willén, Alexander (DP SAM;22/2020, Working paper, 2020-11)
      The first year after childbirth involves dramatic changes to parents’ lives and is crucial for children’s development. Using plausibly exogenous job loss from mass layoffs, we study the effect of labor shocks on mothers ...
    • The Role of Labor Unions in Immigrant Integration 

      Dodini, Samuel; Willén, Alexander; Zhu, Julia Li (DP SAM;24/2023, Working paper, 2023-12)
      We examine if unions narrow or widen labor market gaps between natives and immigrants. We do so by combining rich Norwegian employer-employee matched register data with exogenous variation in union membership obtained ...
    • The Timing of Parental Job Displacement, Child Development and Family Adjustment 

      Carneiro, Pedro; Salvanes, Kjell G.; Willage, Barton; Willén, Alexander (SAM DP;12/2022, Working paper, 2022-09)
      This paper examines if the effect of parental labor market shocks on child development depends on the age of the child at the time of the shock. To address this question, we leverage rich Norwegian population-wide register ...
    • Understanding the Decline in Private Sector Unionization: A Skill-based Approach 

      Dodini, Samuel; Lovenheim, Michael; Willén, Alexander (DP SAM;07/2021, Working paper, 2021-03)
      Private-sector unionization rates have fallen precipitously in the United States over the past half century, from 25% in 1973 to only 7% in 2018. We take a skill-based approach to studying this decline, using data from the ...