Assar Lindbeck

Bio: Assar Lindbeck is an academic researcher from Research Institute of Industrial Economics. The author has contributed to research in topics: Welfare state & Unemployment. The author has an hindex of 54, co-authored 234 publications receiving 13761 citations. Previous affiliations of Assar Lindbeck include University of Copenhagen & Simon Fraser University.

Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition

Abstract: This paper models balanced-budget redistribution between socio-economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties. Equilibrium is unique in the present model, and a sufficient condition for existence is given, requiring that there be enough ‘stochastic heterogeneity’ with respect to party preferences in the electorate. The validity of Hotelling's ‘principle of minimum differentiation’, and of ‘Director's Law’, are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions, and voter's possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties. The policy strategy of expected-plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality. Incomes are fixed and known, so lump-sum taxation is feasible. However, constraints on tax/transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis.

The insider-outsider theory of employment and unemployment

Abstract: This book provides an accessible, balanced account of the insider-outsider theory of labor market activity. It focuses on how "insiders" (incumbent employees whose jobs are protected by various labor turnover costs) get market power, what they do with that power, and how their activities affect the "outsiders" (who are either unemployed or work in the informal sector). The book examines the effects of insiders' activities on wages, employment, and unemployment; discusses the associated policy implications; and relates the insider-outsider theory to other theories of labor market activity.The central part of the book consists of a series of previously published articles that have been edited to convey a single coherent account of the insider-outsider theory. Chapters are preceded by overviews summarizing the main ideas and relating them to the book's underlying theme.Assar Lindbeck is Professor of International Economics and Director of the Institute of International Economics at the University of Stockholm. Dennis J. Snower is Professor of Economics, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State

Abstract: This paper analyzes the interplay between social norms and economic incentives in the context of work decisions in the modern welfare state. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social no ...

Multitask Learning and the Reorganization of Work: From Tayloristic to Holistic Organization

Abstract: The paper analyzes an important aspect of the contemporary reorganization of work within firms: the shift from "Tayloristic" organization (characterized by specialization by tasks) to "holistic" organization (featuring job rotation, integration of tasks and learning across tasks). We examine four driving forces behind this restructuring process: advances in production technologies promoting technological task complementarities, advances in information technologies promoting informational task complementarities, changes in worker preferences in favor of versatile work, and advances in human capital that make workers more versatile. Our analysis can also help explain the recent widening of wage differentials and disparities in job opportunities, not only between occupational, educational, and industry groups, but also within these groups.

Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships

Abstract: This paper develops a new approach to the problem of testing the existence of a level relationship between a dependent variable and a set of regressors, when it is not known with certainty whether the underlying regressors are trend- or first-difference stationary. The proposed tests are based on standard F- and t-statistics used to test the significance of the lagged levels of the variables in a univariate equilibrium correction mechanism. The asymptotic distributions of these statistics are non-standard under the null hypothesis that there exists no level relationship, irrespective of whether the regressors are I(0) or I(1). Two sets of asymptotic critical values are provided: one when all regressors are purely I(1) and the other if they are all purely I(0). These two sets of critical values provide a band covering all possible classifications of the regressors into purely I(0), purely I(1) or mutually cointegrated. Accordingly, various bounds testing procedures are proposed. It is shown that the proposed tests are consistent, and their asymptotic distribution under the null and suitably defined local alternatives are derived. The empirical relevance of the bounds procedures is demonstrated by a re-examination of the earnings equation included in the UK Treasury macroeconometric model. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review

Abstract: This paper discusses the discounted utility (DU) model: its historical development, underlying assumptions, and "anomalies" - the empirical regularities that are inconsistent with its theoretical predictions. We then summarize the alternate theoretical formulations that have been advanced to address these anomalies. We also review three decades of empirical research on intertemporal choice, and discuss reasons for the spectacular variation in implicit discount rates across studies. Throughout the paper, we stress the importance of distinguishing time preference, per se, from many other considerations that also influence intertemporal choices.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Abstract: From the Publisher: A Question of Identity Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …