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This chapter argues that models trying to explain the spread of drug use should not be based on standard epidemiological models developed to describe the spread of infectious diseases. The main weaknesses of the standard model are the lack of attention to micro-foundations and the inappropriateness of several of its assumptions in the context of drug use. An approach based on mechanisms and social interaction is argued to provide a promising alternative to the standard approach. To illustrate this, a model of the spread of drugs based on two mechanisms has been developed (observational learning and social stigma). Lastly, some of the difficulties in testing and deriving policy implications in these models are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine ideas and notions in the founding and development of the area of mental health services in school in Sweden, with special focus on school psychology and school social work.

From a history of thought perspective, this paper investigates public Swedish school-related documents from the early 1900s up until the 1980s in order to reveal the influential ideas about school health care, children’s needs, and professionals’ responsibilities. These ideas are linked to the twentieth century development of the behavioural sciences, the school system, and the welfare state in Sweden.

Two main turning points are identified. The first occurred in the 1940s when psychologists and social workers were invited to become part of schools as experts on children’s mental health care, implying that mental health issues had become included in the school’s responsibility. The second turning point came in the 1970s when the tasks and the ideational context for the mental health experts changed dramatically. The first turning point challenged the dominant explanation model, a model that relied on scientific references to medicine, and eventually led to an acceptance of psychology instead as dominant provider of explanatory models. The second turning point affected the tension between child and system, and implied a subordination of the needs of the system for the benefit of the needs of the child.

This paper highlights how views on children’s needs and on the responsibilities of school and its professionals have been constructed and conceptualised differently over time and how those views are connected to changes in science, school, and society.

With the worldwide open government data (OGD) movement and frequent public health emergencies in recent years, academic research on OGD for public health emergencies has been growing. However, it is not fully understood how to promote OGD on public health emergencies. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors that influence OGD on public health emergencies.

The technology–organization–environment framework is applied to explore factors that influence OGD during COVID-19. It is argued that the effects of four key factors – technical capacity, organizational readiness, social attention and top-down pressure – are contingent on the severity of the pandemic. A unique data set was created by combining multiple data sources which include archival government data, a survey of 1,034 Chinese respondents during the COVID-19 outbreak and official COVID-19 reports.

The data analysis indicates that the four factors positively affect OGD, and pandemic severity strengthens the effects of technical capacity, organizational readiness and social attention on OGD.

This study provides theoretical insights regarding how to improve OGD during public health emergencies, which can guide government efforts in sharing data with the public when dealing with outbreak in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of collectively agreed increases in minimum wages for manual workers on employment transitions and hours.

The econometric approach relies on the identification of workers affected by minimum wage changes, depending on their position in the wage distribution and contrasts outcomes for these workers to those for unaffected workers, with slightly higher wages.

The analysis suggests that separations increase as minimum wages increase and that substitution between worker groups in response to changes in minimum wages is important in retail. In general, though, hours do not change much as minimum wages increase.

Analyses that deal with employment consequences of increasing minimum wages but disregard hours may exaggerate the overall decline in employment to the extent that job losses are concentrated among low-paid, part-time workers.

With union-bargained minimum wages, unions and employers need to carefully consider the effects of increasing rates on employment.

The findings that there is a trade-off between higher wages among the low-paid and employment loss and that employment to some extent is reshuffled between individuals should be important from a welfare perspective.

The literature on employment effects of minimum wages is large, but very few studies are concerned with union-bargained minimum wages. The assumptions of the econometric model are tested in a novel way by imposing fictitious minimum wages on lower-level non-manuals in the same industry, with turnover characteristics similar to those of manuals but covered by a different collective agreement with non-binding actual minimum wages.