Empirical Essays on Labor-Force Participation, Matching, and Trade

Sammanfattning: This thesis consist of four self-contained essays.Essay I estimates the macroeconomic effect of labor market programs on labor-force participation. The results indicate that labor market programs have relatively large and positive effects on labor-force participation. If the number of participants in programs is permanently increased, the labor force increases by about 70 persons in the long run. The positive effect of labor market programs is larger in down-turns.Essay II examine if the flow rate from open unemployment to labor market programs affect the labor-force participation rate. The results show that increased probability of moving from open unemployment to labor market programs have positive effects on the labor-force participation rate. The positive effects are found for different age groups. The estimated effect is countercyclical.Essay III deals with the long-run behavior of Swedish exports and export prices. I find that i) the cointegration analysis supports the hypothesis of a "long-run" demand function for Swedish exports; ii) the foreign trend and the domestic labor trend are equally important for exports in the long-run; iii) the domestic labor trend is the most important factor behind the changes in the relative prices; and iv) the productivity trend is important for real wages.Essay IV (with Anders Forslund) estimates empirical matching functions for Sweden, with focus on time aggregation problem, and on stock-flow matching. The parameter estimates in all estimated models forcefully reject random matching but are consistent with stock-flow matching. There is evidence of time aggregation problem in our results, and it provides a warning against over-confidence in estimates of the scale elasticity of the matching function derived from annual or quarterly data, if no account is taken to the within period inflow of job-seekers and vacancies.