By allowing for imperfectly informed markets and the role of private information, we offer newinsights about observed deviations of portfolio concentrations in domestic relative to foreignrisky assets, or “home bias”, from what standard finance models predict. Our model ascribesthe...

Traders in global markets operate at different local times-of-day. Suboptimal times-of-day may produce sleepiness due to daily variations in sleep/wake patterns and possibly also increased accumulation of hours awake. Global asset markets imply significantly increased heterogeneity in circadian...

We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increasejob search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influencesthe arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workerssend out....

We use a new and exceptionally rich administrative data set for Germany to evaluate theemployment effects of a variety of public sponsored training programs in the early 2000s.Building on the work of Sianesi (2003, 2004), we employ propensity score matching methodsin a dynamic, multiple...

Based on a sequence of reforms in the Norwegian unemployment insurance (UI) system, weshow that activity-oriented UI regimes – i.e., regimes with a high likelihood of requiredparticipation in active labor market programs, duration limitations on unconditional UIentitlements, and high sanction...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become a major focus of German activelabour market policy (ALMP) in recent years. If effective, this would not only reduceGermany’s persistently high unemployment rate, but also increase its notoriously low selfemploymentrate. Empirical evidence on...

In light of nonstationary search theory (van den Berg, 1990), this paper estimates the effectsof benefit entitlement periods and the size of unemployment benefits on unemploymentdurations and post-unemployment earnings in West Germany...

We use panel data from the US Health and Retirement Study 1992-2002 to estimate theeffect of self-assessed health limitations on active labor market participation of men aroundretirement age. Self-assessments of health and functioning typically introduce anendogeneity bias when studying the...

This paper considers the statistical analysis of large panel data sets where even afterconditioning on common observed effects the cross section units might remain dependentlydistributed. This could arise when the cross section units are subject to unobserved commoneffects and/or if there are...

This paper analyzes the impact of changes in macroeconomic conditions on the income distribution in Spain. Using household data from the Encuesta Continuada de Presupuestos Familiares (ECPF) from 1985 to 1996, we disentangle the effect of aggregate variables on the income distribution by...