This thesis consists of three self-contained essays about immigrants’ experiences in Sweden. They all focus on the interaction between institutional settings and effects on immigrants’ economic conditions. Essay I examines the effects of changed eligibility rules for disability pension in the 1979 Swedish pension reform on immigrant retirement behavior. The reform made disability pension in the form of basic pension available to a wider group of immigrants. Before the pension reform, the eligibility for a basic pension for foreign citizens living in Sweden was dependent on bilateral and multilateral agreements on social security between Sweden and other countries. Thus, immigrants who were not covered by any of these agreements had no access to a basic pension before the reform. Through the reform, all foreign citizens residing in Sweden were made eligible for a basic pension after a short qualification period. The results indicate a substantial impact on the retirement rate with disability pension on the immigrant group that was made eligible for a basic pension by the reform. These findings confirm previous research showing that the size of the benefit levels in the pension system affects early retirement behavior. Essay II analyzes the impact of the Swedish taxi and bus deregulations on the differences in labor earnings between Swedish born and foreign born workers in these sectors. The changes in the gap in labor earnings that are due to the deregulation are estimated. The results show that there was no significant decrease in the differences in labor earnings between Swedish born and foreign born workers in the bus sector as a result of the 1989 deregulation. As regards the taxi sector, the results show that, before the deregulation, there were only small differences in labor earnings between Swedish born and foreign born workers. After the deregulation, the real labor earnings of foreign born workers decreased substantially more than those of Swedish born workers. However, there was a larger increase in the inflow of foreign born workers than of Swedish born workers into the taxi sector after the deregulation, which may have changed the composition of immigrant workers in this sector. Essay III investigates the impact of becoming a Swedish citizen on annual labor earnings. The study finds a positive impact of naturalization on labor earnings, in particular for immigrants originating from Africa and Asia, an effect than cannot only be attributed to selection into citizenship. A clear trend of increasing labor earnings during the years before becoming a Swedish citizen is found. This trend also continued during the years after citizenship acquisition. The study also suggests that the effects of naturalization on labor earnings are larger for men than for women, and larger for individuals with very low income.

Diese Dissertation umfasst drei Aufsätze, von denen sich die ersten beiden mit dem Phänomen der beruflichen Mobilität von Arbeitnehmern im westdeutschen Arbeitsmarkt befassen. Der erste Aufsatz untersucht für Absolventen einer dualen Berufsausbildung die kausalen Lohneffekte von Mobilität über Firmen und Berufe hinweg. Die Instrumentenvariablenschätzungen, welche exogene Variation in regionalen Arbeitsmarktcharakteristika ausnutzen, zeigen, dass Berufswechsel innerhalb des Ausbildungsbetriebs einen Karrierefortschritt darstellen. Bei Jobwechseln dominiert der Verlust von firmenspezifischem Humankapital. Allerdings nimmt der Lohnverlust nicht weiter zu, wenn zusätzlich zur Firma auch der Beruf gewechselt wird. Angesichts dieser Ergebnisse dokumentiert der zweite Aufsatz Muster von beruflicher Mobilität in Westdeutschland über den Zeitraum 1982--2008 innerhalb von und zwischen Firmen. Die Häufigkeit von beruflicher Mobilität hat seit 1982 zwischen Firmen signifikant zugenommen und innerhalb von Firmen signifikant abgenommen. Die Analyse betrachtet zudem mögliche Erklärungsansätze für diese Entwicklungen, wie zum Beispiel den demografischen Wandel oder den Zusammenhang zwischen beruflicher Mobilität und Arbeitslosigkeit. Der dritte Aufsatz untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen Produktmarktderegulierung und Arbeitsmarktergebnissen. Die Reform der deutschen Handwerksordnung von 2003 wird als natürliches Experiment genutzt, um mögliche Einflüsse der Abschaffung von Markteintrittsbarrieren auf selbstständige und abhängige Beschäftigung zu untersuchen. Da Zweifel an der Gültigkeit der identifizierenden Annahmen aufkommen, können die Schätzergebnisse nicht kausal interpretiert werden. Dennoch legen die Ergebnisse zumindest in Teilen nahe, dass der in der Literatur bereits dokumentierte positive Effekt auf selbstständige Beschäftigung plausibel ist, wohingegen die Reform vermutlich keinen Anstieg der abhängigen Beschäftigung in den deregulierten Berufen zur Folge hatte. / This thesis comprises three essays, out of which the first two study the phenomenon of worker mobility across occupations in the West German labor market. The first essay studies the causal wage effects of mobility across firms and occupations among graduates from apprenticeship training. Exploiting variation in regional labor market characteristics the instrumental variables estimations indicate that occupation switches within the training firm involve a career progression. For job switches the loss of firm-specific human capital seems to dominate. However, the wage loss does not grow when an occupation switch occurs simultaneously. In light of these results, the second essay in this thesis studies patterns of occupational mobility in West Germany over the period 1982--2008 separately within and across firms. Most importantly, occupational mobility rates across firms have significantly increased since the early 1980s, while within-firm occupational mobility rates have significantly decreased. The essay also assesses potential explanations for these developments, such as demographic change or the relationship between occupational mobility and unemployment. The third essay in this thesis studies the relationship between product market deregulation and labor market outcomes. It exploits the 2003 reform of the German Crafts Code as a natural experiment to study how the abolishment of barriers to firm entry may affect self-employment and dependent employment. Since there are doubts regarding the validity of the identifying assumptions, the results cannot be interpreted causally. Nevertheless, the analysis at least partially corroborates the evidence for a positive reform effect on self-employment documented elsewhere in the literature, while the reform seems not to have had a positive effect on dependent employment in the deregulated crafts occupations.