This paper examines ethnic disparities in the transition to home ownership using longitudinal register data from the Netherlands. The study performs a discrete duration model to account for individual and parental background and neighbourhood conditions. Subsequently, the size of explained...

Students' choices in education can only be based on expected outcomes. Econometric models that infer expectations based on ex post outcomes impose a rational structure of expectations on school performance and post-graduation earnings. Direct surveys suggest much ignorance and fuzziness. We use...

In the Netherlands auditors can be trained in a part-time educational track in which students combine working and studying or in a full-time educational track. The former training is relatively firm-specific whereas the latter training is relatively general. Applying human capital theory, we...

Firms hiring fresh graduates face uncertainty on the future productivity of workers. Theory suggests that starting wages reflect this, with lower pay for greater uncertainty. We use the dispersion of exam grades within a field of education as an indicator of the unobserved heterogeneity that...

The risk of investment in schooling has largely been ignored. We assess the variance in the rate of return by surveying the international empirical literature from this fresh perspective and by simulating risky earnings profiles in alternative options, choosing parameters on basis of the very...