Gylfi Zoega
Biographic Data
| ID | 3772346 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gylfi Zoega |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gylfi |
| FAMILY NAME | Zoega |
| SIGNATURE | ZOËGA G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Iceland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7293-4596 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Does Mandatory Saving Reduce Voluntary Saving? Evidence from a Pension Reform
Recently, mandatory pension contributions in Iceland were increased substantially in the private sector while remaining unchanged in the public sector. Taking this as a large natural experiment, this paper studies the effects of this change on households’ voluntary saving, using comprehensive third-party reported information on income, assets, and debt for all taxpayers. Using difference-in-differences, we find that households do not reduce volun…
A Natural Experiment in Education Reform: The Case of Upper‐Secondary Curriculum Compression
We use a change in Iceland's education system as a natural experiment to measure the effect of years spent in upper‐secondary school on subsequent first‐year outcomes at university. The duration of Iceland's upper‐secondary education was shortened by 1 year through compression of the curriculum. We find that shorter upper‐secondary education, 3 years instead of the previous four, leads to first‐year university students completing fewer credits, g…
Old‐Age Saving in a Welfare State
We address the reasons why retirees continue saving well into old age. We contribute to the literature by studying the saving behavior of retirees in a country where health care is free of charge as well as nursing homes. This removes some of the precautionary motive for saving, leaving the bequest motive and other inter‐generational transfers, which are the focus of our study. It is shown that saving remains positive in retirement and depends on…
Longevity Adjustment of Retirement Age and Intragenerational Inequality
We find that segments of society that have shorter life expectancy can expect a lower income from their pensions and lifetime utility due to the longevity of other groups participating in the same pension scheme. Linking the pension age to average life expectancy magnifies the negative effect on the lifetime utility of those who suffer low longevity. Furthermore, when the income of those with greater longevity increases, those with shorter life e…
Dynamism: The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction, and Economic Growth
Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps argues that the high level of innovation in the West was not a result of scientific discoveries plus entrepreneurship. Rather, modern values—particularly the individualism and self-expression prevailing among the people—fueled the dynamism needed for widespread innovation
Exploring the effects of capital mobility on the saving–investment nexus: Evidence from Icelandic historical data
We explore the effects of capital mobility on the relationship between saving and investment using historical data for Iceland. First, we analyse the saving–investment (S-I) correlation for the period of restricted capital mobility using data from 1960 and 1994. We then add a period of free capital mobility between 1994 and 2008 and estimate the correlation for the period 1960–2008. Finally, we extend our analysis to the 2008 to 2016 period, when…
Discrimination in the Housing Market as an Impediment to European Labour Force Integration: The Case of Iceland
Seasonality of birth rates in agricultural Iceland
The seasonal pattern of birth rates in nineteenth-century agricultural Iceland, peaking in late summer and early autumn, gradually disappeared when the population migrated to fishing villages in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. We describe how this pattern is consistent with changes that have occurred in other countries and discuss some possible causes
Sleep and the management of alertness
Values and Labor Force Participation in the Nordic Countries
The Nordic countries are known for their success in combining an extensive welfare state with high labor force participation. This is explained by the origins and organization of their welfare states, which can be traced to a set of values and beliefs that emphasize the right of women to participate in the labor market. These values are shared by individuals born in other European countries of Nordic parents and may have origins in the Nordic cou…
On the economics of sleeping
An essay on the generational effect of employment protection
The Financial Crisis: Joblessness and Investmentlessness
Financial crises follow a pattern that consists of changes in asset prices, real exchange rates, investment and employment. One noteworthy feature of this pattern is the jobless recoveries that often follow such crises. This was the experience of Finland and Sweden in the aftermath of their financial crises in the early 1990s and currently appears to be the case in the United States and many other countries. The behavior of unemployment during th…
Natural Resources and Economic Growth: The Role of Investment
Is it possible that excessive reliance on natural resources affects saving and investment in a way that retards economic growth? – and thus, in the long run, the level of output per capita. This paper reviews the literature, explores the data and compares and contrasts the explanatory power and interplay of natural resources and civil liberties, our proxy for institutional variables currently under scrutiny in the literature. We propose that natu…
Unions, Work-Related Training, and Wages: Evidence for British Men
Using data for the years 1991-96 from the British Household Panel Survey, the authors investigate how union coverage affected work-related training and how the union-training link affected wages and wage growth for a sample of full-time men. Relative to non-covered workers, union-covered workers were more likely to receive training and also received more days of training. Among workers who received training, those with union coverage enjoyed grea…
A Mixed Blessing: Natural Resources and Economic Growth
This paper diagnoses the symptoms of the Dutch disease in a two-sector stochastic endogenous growth model. A productive, low-skill-intensive primary sector causes the currency to appreciate in real terms, thus hampering the development of a high-skill-intensive secondary sector and thereby reducing growth. Moreover, the volatility of the primary sector generates real-exchange-rate uncertainty and may thus reduce investment and learning in the sec…
A Nonparametric Analysis of Regional Unemployment Dynamics in Britain
This paper estimates the probability distribution of relative county unemployment in Britain for the years 1981-1995. We find that the distribution is unimodal in all years, with a falling variance between 1989 and 1994. We use bootstrap methods to determine critical values for the two tails of the distribution, and analyse intra-distribution dynamics. An unemployment transition is defined as a move between a tail and the centre of the distributi…
A Nonparametrsc Analysis of Regional Unemployment Dynamics in Britain
This article estimates the probability distribution of relative county unemployment in Britain for the years 1981–1995. We find that the distribution is unimodal in all years, with a falling variance between 1989 and 1994. We use bootstrap methods to determine critical values for the two tails of the distribution and analyze intradistribution dynamics. We calculate transition probabilities and find that the probability of leaving any given state …
Natural‐Rate Theory and OECD Unemployment
Our mission is to examine from the perspective of the intertemporal-equilibrium models of endogenous natural-rate theory the huge swings in unemployment among the OECD countries in recent times. We first look at the huge rise in jobless rates between the early 1970s and the early 1990s throughout the OECD: in the United States a rise from about 51 per cent to 7 per cent, Canada from about 6 to 10,Japan from 11 to 21, Italy from 31 to about 71, th…
Public Consumption and Unemployment
This paper introduces public consumption—hence the size of the public sector—into an efficiency wage model of the labour market. The effect of a simultaneous rise in taxes and public consumption on unemployment is derived. There arises an unambiguous positive relationship between the size of the public sector and equilibrium unemployment if public and private consumption are substitutes and wages are taxed. The impact of taxes on consumption on u…
Natural‐Rate Theory and OECD Unemployment
Our mission is to examine from the perspective of the intertemporal-equilibrium models of endogenous natural-rate theory the huge swings in unemployment among the OECD countries in recent times. We first look at the huge rise in jobless rates between the early 1970s and the early 1990s throughout the OECD: in the United States a rise from about 51 per cent to 7 per cent, Canada from about 6 to 10,Japan from 11 to 21, Italy from 31 to about 71, th…
Unions, Work-Related Training, and Wages: Evidence for British Men
Using data for the years 1991-96 from the British Household Panel Survey, the authors investigate how union coverage affected work-related training and how the union-training link affected wages and wage growth for a sample of full-time men. Relative to non-covered workers, union-covered workers were more likely to receive training and also received more days of training. Among workers who received training, those with union coverage enjoyed grea…
Discrimination in the Housing Market as an Impediment to European Labour Force Integration: The Case of Iceland
On the economics of sleeping
Public Consumption and Unemployment
This paper introduces public consumption—hence the size of the public sector—into an efficiency wage model of the labour market. The effect of a simultaneous rise in taxes and public consumption on unemployment is derived. There arises an unambiguous positive relationship between the size of the public sector and equilibrium unemployment if public and private consumption are substitutes and wages are taxed. The impact of taxes on consumption on u…
Natural‐Rate Theory and OECD Unemployment
Our mission is to examine from the perspective of the intertemporal-equilibrium models of endogenous natural-rate theory the huge swings in unemployment among the OECD countries in recent times. We first look at the huge rise in jobless rates between the early 1970s and the early 1990s throughout the OECD: in the United States a rise from about 51 per cent to 7 per cent, Canada from about 6 to 10,Japan from 11 to 21, Italy from 31 to about 71, th…
A Mixed Blessing: Natural Resources and Economic Growth
This paper diagnoses the symptoms of the Dutch disease in a two-sector stochastic endogenous growth model. A productive, low-skill-intensive primary sector causes the currency to appreciate in real terms, thus hampering the development of a high-skill-intensive secondary sector and thereby reducing growth. Moreover, the volatility of the primary sector generates real-exchange-rate uncertainty and may thus reduce investment and learning in the sec…
A Nonparametric Analysis of Regional Unemployment Dynamics in Britain
This paper estimates the probability distribution of relative county unemployment in Britain for the years 1981-1995. We find that the distribution is unimodal in all years, with a falling variance between 1989 and 1994. We use bootstrap methods to determine critical values for the two tails of the distribution, and analyse intra-distribution dynamics. An unemployment transition is defined as a move between a tail and the centre of the distributi…
A Nonparametrsc Analysis of Regional Unemployment Dynamics in Britain
This article estimates the probability distribution of relative county unemployment in Britain for the years 1981–1995. We find that the distribution is unimodal in all years, with a falling variance between 1989 and 1994. We use bootstrap methods to determine critical values for the two tails of the distribution and analyze intradistribution dynamics. We calculate transition probabilities and find that the probability of leaving any given state …
Unions, Work-Related Training, and Wages: Evidence for British Men
Using data for the years 1991-96 from the British Household Panel Survey, the authors investigate how union coverage affected work-related training and how the union-training link affected wages and wage growth for a sample of full-time men. Relative to non-covered workers, union-covered workers were more likely to receive training and also received more days of training. Among workers who received training, those with union coverage enjoyed grea…
Natural Resources and Economic Growth: The Role of Investment
Is it possible that excessive reliance on natural resources affects saving and investment in a way that retards economic growth? – and thus, in the long run, the level of output per capita. This paper reviews the literature, explores the data and compares and contrasts the explanatory power and interplay of natural resources and civil liberties, our proxy for institutional variables currently under scrutiny in the literature. We propose that natu…
An essay on the generational effect of employment protection
The Financial Crisis: Joblessness and Investmentlessness
Financial crises follow a pattern that consists of changes in asset prices, real exchange rates, investment and employment. One noteworthy feature of this pattern is the jobless recoveries that often follow such crises. This was the experience of Finland and Sweden in the aftermath of their financial crises in the early 1990s and currently appears to be the case in the United States and many other countries. The behavior of unemployment during th…
On the economics of sleeping
Values and Labor Force Participation in the Nordic Countries
The Nordic countries are known for their success in combining an extensive welfare state with high labor force participation. This is explained by the origins and organization of their welfare states, which can be traced to a set of values and beliefs that emphasize the right of women to participate in the labor market. These values are shared by individuals born in other European countries of Nordic parents and may have origins in the Nordic cou…
Sleep and the management of alertness
Seasonality of birth rates in agricultural Iceland
The seasonal pattern of birth rates in nineteenth-century agricultural Iceland, peaking in late summer and early autumn, gradually disappeared when the population migrated to fishing villages in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. We describe how this pattern is consistent with changes that have occurred in other countries and discuss some possible causes
Discrimination in the Housing Market as an Impediment to European Labour Force Integration: The Case of Iceland
Exploring the effects of capital mobility on the saving–investment nexus: Evidence from Icelandic historical data
We explore the effects of capital mobility on the relationship between saving and investment using historical data for Iceland. First, we analyse the saving–investment (S-I) correlation for the period of restricted capital mobility using data from 1960 and 1994. We then add a period of free capital mobility between 1994 and 2008 and estimate the correlation for the period 1960–2008. Finally, we extend our analysis to the 2008 to 2016 period, when…
Dynamism: The Values That Drive Innovation, Job Satisfaction, and Economic Growth
Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps argues that the high level of innovation in the West was not a result of scientific discoveries plus entrepreneurship. Rather, modern values—particularly the individualism and self-expression prevailing among the people—fueled the dynamism needed for widespread innovation
Longevity Adjustment of Retirement Age and Intragenerational Inequality
We find that segments of society that have shorter life expectancy can expect a lower income from their pensions and lifetime utility due to the longevity of other groups participating in the same pension scheme. Linking the pension age to average life expectancy magnifies the negative effect on the lifetime utility of those who suffer low longevity. Furthermore, when the income of those with greater longevity increases, those with shorter life e…
Does Mandatory Saving Reduce Voluntary Saving? Evidence from a Pension Reform
Recently, mandatory pension contributions in Iceland were increased substantially in the private sector while remaining unchanged in the public sector. Taking this as a large natural experiment, this paper studies the effects of this change on households’ voluntary saving, using comprehensive third-party reported information on income, assets, and debt for all taxpayers. Using difference-in-differences, we find that households do not reduce volun…
A Natural Experiment in Education Reform: The Case of Upper‐Secondary Curriculum Compression
We use a change in Iceland's education system as a natural experiment to measure the effect of years spent in upper‐secondary school on subsequent first‐year outcomes at university. The duration of Iceland's upper‐secondary education was shortened by 1 year through compression of the curriculum. We find that shorter upper‐secondary education, 3 years instead of the previous four, leads to first‐year university students completing fewer credits, g…
Old‐Age Saving in a Welfare State
We address the reasons why retirees continue saving well into old age. We contribute to the literature by studying the saving behavior of retirees in a country where health care is free of charge as well as nursing homes. This removes some of the precautionary motive for saving, leaving the bequest motive and other inter‐generational transfers, which are the focus of our study. It is shown that saving remains positive in retirement and depends on…
Economics (18 works) · Labour economics (7 works) · Macroeconomics (6 works) · Unemployment (6 works) · Econometrics (5 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Economic growth (4 works) · Finance (4 works)