The paper seeks to explain the huge cross country variation in private pension funding,shaped by historical choice made when universal pension systems were created after theGreat Depression. According to Perotti and von Thadden (2006), large inflationaryshocks due to war damage devastated middle...

This paper estimates the effect of job loss on mortality for older male workers with strong labor force attachment. Using Dutch administrative data, we find that job loss due to sudden firm closure increased the probability to die within five years by a sizable 0.60 percentage points....

We analyse the economic impacts of place-based policies that aim to enhance economic development by stimulating growth and productivity of firms in designated areas. We use unique panel data from China with information on manufacturing firms’ production factors, productivity and location, and...

This research documents employment opportunities of labour-market entrants during the COVID-19 crisis in the Netherlands. Two recent cohorts of graduates are studied and compared to two preCOVID-19 cohorts: the 2019 cohort was unexpectedly hit by the COVID-19 crisis about six months after...

It is often assumed that transfers received from governments, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), friends and relatives help rural households to pool risk. In this paper I investigate two functions of transfers in Ethiopia: risk pooling and income redistribution. Unlike most of the literature...

In this paper, we use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement and sickness/disability benefits. The reform, becoming effective on January 1st 2004, required the...

This paper explores how a conditional cash transfer program influences students' schooling decisions when program payments stop in the middle of the school career. To that end, I examine Mexico's Progresa, which covered students only until the end of middle school (at age 15) in its early years....

The COVID-19 crisis may have widely and permanently altered the labor market through the demand for skills. Crises tend to accelerate technological change. Previous recent crises were characterized by an acceleration of automation, which generally led to a decrease in middle-income jobs with...