The word "offset" in the broad sense represents reciprocal trade advantages that result from economic agreements. However, as a result of increasing competition among suppliers due to the reduced global defense market, declining military budgets, and other aspects, buyers are able to influence the conditions under which major defense programs are obtained. Not only unions, defense industries, trade associations, and public, but also EU is involved. The Czech Republic as a member of these organizations has to follow their rules as well, and their views and policies regarding offsets might be different. The objective of this project is to examine what issues, if any, the Czech Republic faces concerning offsets implementation in international trade. This study will discuss briefly the history of the Czech Republic's participation in offsets, and its current policy, if any, towards using offset practices. The Czech Republic's goals in offset practices, and government support for them, would be another area of research. The Czech Republic is an EU member and therefore is obliged to follow policies implemented by these institutions. Whether there is any connection between the Czech government policy and EU policies will also be examined. Specifically, the project will focus on what should be done in future offsets implementation, and what to be aware of.

This thesis aims to investigate the extent to which work-related factors contribute to the health inequalities often observed between foreign-origin and native-origin persons in Sweden. Four empirical studies using survey data and population-based registers assessed the health impact of different labor market adversities among groups of foreign-origin persons who were both in and outside the labor market relative to native-origin Swedes. Studies I and II examined associations between different measures of working life quality, including adverse psychosocial and physical working conditions and educational mismatch, and self-reported health among the employed. Adverse psychosocial and physical working conditions minimally contributed to the excess risk of poor health found among workers from low- and middle-income countries. Over-education had a stronger association with increased risk of poor health, most notably among foreign-born workers from countries outside of Western Europe. Under-educated women from these countries also demonstrated an elevated risk of poor health.  There was no association between educational mismatch and poor health among native-born workers.  Studies III and IV focused on the health implications of labor market exclusion, and examined relationships between employment status and risk of all-cause mortality and suicide. The majority of foreign-origin groups that experienced unemployment showed an elevated risk of both mortality and suicide. The magnitude of excess risk varied by generational status and region of origin. Variations in patterns of suicide risk were also evident among migrants by age at arrival and duration of residence. Yet within many foreign-origin groups, health advantages were observed among the employed. The health of migrants is affected by the confluence of several different pre- and post-migration factors.  The extent to which health inequalities are found among persons of foreign-origin in Sweden is influenced by the degree to which they experience labor market adversities, as well as differential vulnerability to the negative effects of these adversities across foreign-origin groups. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

Can social cohesion and solidarity persist in the face of large-scale migration? One particularly contentious hypothesis states that native majorities will be unwilling to support the provision of government-funded welfare to those whom they do not consider to be part of their own sociocultural ingroup, especially when sociocultural or ethnic otherness and socioeconomic disadvantage overlap. Consequently, majorities’ willingness to accept disadvantaged immigrant groups as legitimate and trusted members of the welfare community is central to the social cohesion of societies diversifying through migration. The dissertation consists of a comprehensive summary, followed by four original studies addressing the interplay between migration-induced diversity and social cohesion through the lens of majority attitudes and the micro and macro contexts within which they are embedded. The studies focus on Sweden and Germany, two European societies that host strong welfare states and large immigrant populations. Together, they seek to answer two central questions: First, does social distance between native-born citizens and immigrants lead the former to withdraw support from all redistributive policies, or are some types of welfare more affected than others? Second, how does the migration-induced diversification of societies come to matter for majority attitudes toward the welfare state and, as they are closely related, for majority attitudes toward the trustworthiness of others? Looking at the case of Germany, Study 1 shows that the conflict between diversity and welfare solidarity is not expressed in a general majority opposition to welfare, but rather in an opposition to government assistance benefiting immigrants – a phenomenon sometimes referred to as welfare chauvinism. Study 2 turns to the case of Sweden and investigates three pathways into welfare chauvinism: via the first-hand experience of immigrant unemployment and putative welfare receipt in the neighborhood context; via exposure to immigrant competition at the workplace; and via negative prejudice against immigrants. We find that the direct observation of immigrant unemployment in the neighborhood increases natives’ preference for spending on other Swedes over spending on immigrants, while competition with immigrants at the workplace does not. Using the same Swedish data, Study 3 hypothesizes that ethnically diverse workplaces imply trust-fostering inter-group contact. Yet, like in Study 2, we find a negative relationship between majority Swedes’ exposure to certain immigrant groups in the neighborhood and their trust in neighbors, while diverse workplaces neither seem to increase trust nor to affect the negative neighborhood-level association. Both Studies 2 and 3 show that negative attitudes toward immigrants increase welfare chauvinism and lower trust, even disregarding majority Swedes’ actual experience of immigrant presence or unemployment. Study 4 thus turns to a social force outside the realm of first-hand experience and explores German online news media debates on the welfare deservingness of various sociodemographic groups – among them, immigrants (as refugees in particular). However, rather than observing the persistent and particular stigmatization of immigrants as undeserving recipients or untrustworthy abusers of welfare, we find much more nuanced descriptions in our vast corpus of news stories. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>

This thesis comprises four chapters, in two parts. The first part examines the result of a Swedish payroll tax reduction; first from the perspective of the worker, then from that of the employer. The second half of the thesis concerns subjective well-being, both from an individual and from an aggregate viewpoint. Payroll Taxes and Youth Labor Demand. In 2007, the Swedish payroll tax was reduced substantially for young workers. This paper examines whether targeted payroll tax reductions are effective in raising youth employment. We estimate a small impact, both on employment and on wages. However, the effect differs markedly across ages, with 4–5 times higher impact on 22–23 year-olds compared to 25-year-olds. Additionally, the employment effects are strongly procyclical, approaching zero in the deep recession. We calculate that the estimated cost per created job is more than four times that of directly hiring workers at the average wage. Payroll Taxes and Firm Performance. The Swedish payroll tax reform of 2007 had the effect that firms' average social fees came to depend on the age structure of their employees. This makes it possible to estimate how firms respond to shocks in labor costs. We find a significant, but very small effect on gross investments, and a negative, but not statistically significant, impact on labor productivity. There are no effects on exit rates or profitability. Beyond Income: The Importance for Life Satisfaction of Having Access to a Cash Margin. We study how life satisfaction among adult Swedes is influenced by having access to a cash margin, i.e. a moderate amount of money that could be acquired on short notice either through own savings, by loan from family or friends, or by other means. We find that cash margin is a strong and robust predictor of life satisfaction, also when controlling for individual fixed-effects and socio-economic conditions, including income. This suggests that cash margin captures something beyond wealth. On Aggregating Subjective Well-Being. This paper discusses the assumptions underlying the aggregation of individually measured well-being. Any aggregation method is associated with measurability assumptions regarding the underlying well-being measure, as well as moral philosophical assumptions with respect to how individual well-being is weighted into a composite metric. I compare welfare across a set of countries, under alternative aggregation methods, and find that countries often can be ranked under comparatively weak measurement assumptions, and, equally important, that aggregation methods can be chosen so as to refrain from strong ethical preconceptions.

Ever since the first Industrial Revolution, during which many textile artisans lost their jobs to weaving machines, the relationship between technological progress and unemployment has been explored and examined by researchers and policy makers. Existing empirical research, mostly at the microeconomic level, has presented ambiguous results. Procuring data on 51 U.S. states for a period of 19 years and a large number of controls, this paper studies the employment effect of technological innovations with a novel state-level macroeconomic analysis. Using commercially-supplied Research and Development expenditure as a proxy, this paper finds that although technological innovations have a non-significant effect on employment at the general state level, there are a few factors that determine how well each state’s labor market responds to technological changes. More specifically, non-urbanized, non-tech-savvy, or states with a large number of workers employed in Manufacturing or Accommodation and Food Services industry experience a more severe unemployment effect than the other states. The results also suggest that unemployment rate is more negatively affected by technological innovations during the Obama Administration, compared with the Clinton and Bush Administration. This paper adds to the limited, macroeconomic literature on technological unemployment, and provides policy makers with important implications on how to prepare citizens for the imminent waves of technological changes.

This thesis consists of four individual essays and an introduction chapter. The essays are in the field of multilevel analysis of economic data. The first essay estimates capitalisation effects of farm attributes, with a particular focus on single farm payments (SFP), into the price of farms. Using a sample of Swedish farm transactions sold all across the country, the results from a spatial multiple-membership model suggests that the local effect of SFP is negative while there is a positive between-region effect of SFP, on farm prices.   The second essay investigates the extent to which differences in the probability to exit from part-time unemployment to a full-time job can be accounted for by spatial contextual factors and individual characteristics. To correctly incorporate contextual effects, a multilevel analysis was applied to explore whether contextual factors account for differences in the probability of transition to full-time employment between individuals with different characteristics. The results indicate that there is a contextual effect and that there are some spatial spill-over effects from neighbouring municipalities.   The third essay investigates the determinants of educational attainment for third-generation immigrants and natives in Sweden. Using a mixed-effects model that includes unobserved family heterogeneity, for linked register data, the main result is that the effect of parent’s educational attainment is mainly due to the between-parental education effect of family income.   The fourth and last essay presents a new robust strategy for performance evaluation in the case of panel data that is based on routinely collected variables or indicators. The suggested strategy applies a cross-classified, mixed-effect model. The strategy is implemented in two illustrative empirical examples, and the robustness is investigated in a Monte Carlo study.

Pain has been described as the most complex human experience and most frequent reason patients seek medical treatment. Few people fail to experience the pain associated with disease, injury, or medical/surgical procedures. However, the impact of unemployment that results from chronic pain suffering has not been widely researched. To present a comprehensive view of the effect unemployment has upon the chronic pain experience, this study focused upon stress philosophy, chronic pain, employment, and coping effectiveness. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and a Personal Data Questionnaire (PDQ) were administered to 96 persons (four groups of 24 subjects) representing either unemployed or employed and either chronic or non-chronic (acute) pain populations.

This study investigates the relationship between stagflation and price stability and full employment and four economic scenarios and the economic condition. The data used in the study were obtained from government publications and were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression. The standard inferential apparatus were employed. Give independent variables were found to be significant in explaining the causes of stagflation. These were: absolute change in M1, oil embargo of 1974, corporate profits, output per hour, and Iranian crisis of 1979. In conclusion, the causes of economic instability do not rest with one single theory or factor, but a combination of several.

En étudiant le rôle d'un état émotionnel négatif stable, apparenté à la peur, sur l'élaboration des représentations sociales du travail et du chômage nous avons pu observer et décrire plusieurs phénomènes importants. Tout d'abord, ce type d'état émotionnel contribuerait à orienter la sélection des éléments d'information constituant le champ représentationnel. Il orienterait cette sélection dans le sens d'un accroissement de l'attention en direction d'éléments relatifs à des préoccupations individuelles au détriment d'éléments relatifs à des questions sociales au sein des représentations du travail et du chômage. Ensuite, une partie de la représentation est congruente avec cet état émotionnel. Cette congruence affective concernait la dimension psychologique de la représentation du chômage. En plus de l'effet de congruence, cet état émotionnel stabiliserait le poids des éléments d'information contenus dans cette dimension psychologique. Enfin, ce type d'état contribuerait à structurer les représentations. L'état émotionnel négatif stable contribuerait à augmenter le nombre des éléments contenus dans le noyau de la représentation du travail. / By studying the role of a stable negative emotional state, like fear, on the social representations elaboration of unemployment and work, we could to observe and describe several important phenomena. Firstly, this type of emotional state guides the informationnal elements selection forming the representational field. It would guide the selection in the direction of increased attention towards items related to individual concerns at the expense of items relating to social issues in the representations of work and unemployment. Secondly, a part of the representation is congruent with this emotional state. This emotional congruence concerned the psychological dimension of the unemployment representation. In addition to the effect congruency, this emotional state stabilizes the weight of the information elements contained in thispsychological dimension. Finally, this state type would take part in structure representations. The stable negative emotional state would increase the number of elements contained in the kernel of the representation of work.

Legal regulation of employment and security against unemployment At the present time of economical recession many countries battle against high unemployment, which can contribute to many economical and social problems. The purpose of my thesis is to describe legal regulation of employment and security against unemployment in the Czech Republic. I focused on main parts of legal regulation and also thought over some institutes. When I came to the conclusion, that the legal regulation has some drawbacks, I suggested that an amendment should be passed. The thesis is composed of eight chapters. Chapter one defines unemployment and its kinds and elucidates, what full employment means, because it is the aim of legal regulation of employment in many countries. At the end of this chapter I sumarize developement of unemployment in Czech Republic from 1990 to present. Chapter two deals with right to work. I enumerate most important international documents, where right to work is regulated. Full employment was also soon mentioned as the basic aim of countries. Similar developement in Community law is described in part four. At the end of chapter is comparison between the right to work under Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and right to work under Employment Act. Chapter three deals with employment policy in...