This paper studies how employment subsidies for start-ups shape their performance. We exploit an unexpected policy reform in Belgium that permanently exempted start-ups hiring their first employee from payroll taxes for that employee. Using firm-level administrative data and a...

Monetary policy asymmetrically affects the response of firms' employment to an output shock and plays a role in cushioning employment adjustment over the business cycle. Combining annual firmlevel data until 2020 with quarterly firm-level data until 2023 and highfrequency monetary policy...

We study how sustainability disclosure regulation affects mutual fund flows and portfolio choices, accounting for investor heterogeneity. Guided by a model of ESG investing under uncertainty, we exploit the introduction of the European Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) as a...

The Paris Agreement is designed to increase climate ambition gradually through a process of ratcheting up. What is the plausible endpoint of this process? We develop a tractable integrated assessment model in which countries interact through a decentralized general equilibrium and negotiate...

Belgium's 2016 payroll tax exemption for first-time employers triggered a sharp increase in firms hiring their first worker but little growth among larger firms. To account for this pattern, we develop and estimate a directed search model - with discrete hiring, firm heterogeneity, and...

This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment on a continuous Japanese-English auction in a common-value 'wallet game'. The main objective is to test whether bidders follow the equilibrium bidding strategy predicted by theory. We find systematic deviations from equilibrium behaviour:...

Using Danish administrative data linked to two independent, validated postpartum depression screenings, we study how postpartum mental health shocks shape women's labor market trajectories. Event-study estimates show no pre-birth differences in trends between depressed and non-depressed mothers,...

The use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, or smart devices will go hand in hand with higher productivity, higher product quality, and lower trade costs. Therefore, it can be expected to be positively related to export activities. This paper uses firm level data for...

The use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, or smart devices will go hand in hand with, among others, higher productivity, higher product quality, more exports and better chances to survive any crisis. Better firms tend to use advanced technologies. Information on...

In a paper published in the Journal of Information Economics in 2024 I reported evidence that firms which use cloud computing do more often export, do more often export to various destinations all over the world, and do export to more different destinations. Results are based on data for...