The purpose of this paper is to present an exercise where we identify optimal income tax rules under the constraint of fixed tax revenue. To this end, we estimate a microeconomic model with 78 parameters that capture heterogeneity in consumption-leisure preferences for singles and couples as...

Matching-type estimators using the propensity score are the major workhorse in active labour market policy evaluation. This work investigates if machine learning algorithms for estimating the propensity score lead to more credible estimation of average treatment effects on the treated using a...

This chapter reviews the existing empirical evidence on how social insurance affects health. Social insurance encompasses programs primarily designed to insure against health risks, such as health insurance, sick leave insurance, accident insurance, long-term care insurance and disability...

This overview describes the development of methods for empirical research in the field of labor economics during the past four decades. This period is characterized by the use of micro data to answer policy relevant research question. Prominent in the literature is the search for exogenous...

We examine the determinants of low income transitions using first-order Markov models that control for initial conditions effects (those found to be poor in the base year may be a nonrandom sample) and for attrition (panel retention may also be non-random). Our econometric model is a form of...

This paper proposes a new approach to identify the wage effects of training. The idea is to narrow down the comparison group by only taking into consideration the workers who wanted to participate in training but did not do so because of some random event. The point estimate of the return to...

This paper analyzes wage decomposition methodology in the context of panel data sample selection embedded in a correlated random effects setting. Identification issues unique to panel data are examined for their implications for wage decompositions. As an empirical example, we apply our...

We develop a nonparametric instrumental variable approach for the estimation of average treatment effects on hazard rates and conditional survival probabilities, without model structure. We derive constructive identification proofs for average treatment effects under noncompliance and dynamic...

We propose and implement a new method to estimate treatment effects in settings where individuals need to be in a certain state (e.g. unemployment) to be eligible for a treatment, treatments may commence at different points in time, and the outcome of interest is realized after the individual...

In this paper, we specify and estimate a structurally dependent competing risks model for the transitions out of unemployment into either new job or recall. The recall probability is allowed to affect the search intensity for new jobs.