According to Daniel Schwammenthal (WSJ, April), about 30 percent of the Danish work force changes jobs each year.  There are few guarantees of job security, and the Danish government spends a great deal of worker retraining.   These training recipients face strong moral and financial pressure to take jobs which are offered to them.  There is also a new NBER paper on the miracle of the Danish labor force.

…we briefly describe some key features of the labor market in Denmark, some of which contribute to the Danish labor markets behaving quite differently from those in many other European countries…We show that mobility is about as high, or even higher, as in the highly fluid U.S. labor market. Finally, we describe and examine the wage structure between and within firms and changes therein since 1980, especially with an eye on possible impacts of the trend towards a more decentralized wage determination. The shift towards decentralized wage bargaining has coincided with deregulation and increased product market competition. The evidence is, however, not consistent with stronger competition in product markets eroding firm-specific rents. Hence, the prime suspect is the change in wage setting institutions.

Starting in the late 1980s, wage bargaining in Denmark became increasingly decentralized, and that is considered to be a major reason for Danish labor market successes.

Here, and on another topic don’t forget wunderkind Ben Casnocha’s new book.

1. Esther Boserup: A female economist from the 1970s, she revised Malthus and her book argued that population pressures stimulated technological progress in agriculture.  She was a precursor of Julian Simon and also a pioneer of work on economics and gender.

2. Frederik Zeuthen: A mathematician and early game theorist from the early 20th century.  He developed the idea of a bargaining zone, how to incorporate "free" commodities into general equilibrium theory, and refined the theory of monopolistic competition.

3. Carl Iversen: He wrote in the 1930s on international capital movements and was a founding member of Mont Pelerin.  A neglected and underrated figure.

Jesper Jespersen is a reasonably well-known post-Keynesian.  More recently there is Bjorn Lomborg, who am I forgetting?

Trier is a worthy destination by any standard, having impressive and
important Roman ruins as well as an 11th century cathedral built in the
very place where Emperor Constantine’s mother first built a church in
the fourth century.

But the Chinese clearly come to see the
place where Marx was born in 1818 [my emphasis], and the local authorities try to
take full advantage of it, promoting their city in China itself and
with the travel agencies that serve Chinese tourists.

They even
offer cultural sensitivity training for merchants, restaurateurs and
others in Trier, instructing them in the finer points of dealing with
Chinese customers. The number 250, for example, which is a kind of
slang for "stupid" in Chinese, is to be avoided, and so is wrapping
paper in white, the color of funereal robes, or yellow, by custom
reserved for the emperor. It is also important to hand over visiting
cards rather formally, with two hands, not just one.

Here is the full story.