In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and focus especially on those incorporating...

We conducted a field experiment to increase our understanding of lottery participation. Using representative data for the Netherlands, we find that lottery participation increased the happiness of participants before the draw. Winning a small prize had no effect on happiness. Our results...

We present the results from a natural experiment in which single mothers on welfare were stimulated to find a job. Two policy instruments were introduced: an earnings disregard and job creation. The experiment was performed at the level of municipalities in The Netherlands, a country with...