We study the effects of surname change to Swedish-sounding or neutral names on earnings for immigrants from Asian/African/Slavic countries. To estimate this effect, we exploit the variation resulting from different timing of name changes across individuals during the 1990s. The results imply that there is a substantial increase in annual earnings after a name change, no effects on earnings prior to a name change, and no positive general effects of a new name for other groups that renounced a foreign name. Based on these findings, we argue that these effects are due to name change as a response to discrimination. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

Procyclical absenteeism might be due to the higher sick rates of marginal workers or a consequence of procyclical incentives to report sick. These hypotheses predict opposite signs for the correlation between sick rates and shares of temporary contracts. Workers on temporary contracts are associated with lower job security in comparison with workers on time-unlimited contracts, implying that temporary employees run the highest risk of lay-off and are expected to have stronger incentives for job attendance. Using industry -region panel data, we find a stable negative correlation between sick rates and shares of temporary contracts implying that procyclical sick rates are compatible with the idea that incentives to report sick are also procyclical. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.JEL classification: J22

Gender and Self-Selection Into a Competitive Environment:Are Women More Overconfident Than Men? *Using a large running race in Sweden, this study shows that there are male-dominated environments in which the selection of women who participate are more likely to be confident/competitive and that, within this group, performance improves equally for both genders.JEL Classification: J2, J16, J71

In a recent article Stefan Fölster and Magnus Henrekson [2001] argue that "…the more the econometric problems that are addressed, the more robust the relationship between government size and economic growth appears". But in failing to control for simultaneity in a valid manner the regressions reported by Fölster/Henrekson are flawed. Moreover, using theoretically valid instruments we find that the estimated partial correlation between size of the public sector and economic growth is statistically insignificant and highly unstable across specifications. A policy-maker who wants to promote growth is well-advised to look for other evidence than crosscountry growth regressions.