Why are firm and job turnover rates so similar across OECD countries? We argue that this may be due to the joint regulation of product and labor markets. For our analysis, we build a stochastic equilibrium model with search frictions and heterogeneous multiple-worker firms. This allows us to...

The paper explores the linkages between labor productivity, innovation and technology spillovers in a panel of manufacturing industries. The roles of R&D, human capital and international trade are considered in stimulating innovation and/or facilitating technology transfer. Using panel-based...

The paper deals with the effects of cohabitation of grown children with their parents on household saving, using data from Italy and the Netherlands. It presents a twoperiod game-theoretical model where the child has to decide whether to move out of the parental home. This decision is affected...

In ancient societies, rules of communal responsibility permitted the imposition of retaliatory sanctions on a wrongdoer’s clan. These rules followed the collective ownership structure of early communities. Over time, notions of personal responsibility emerged, terminating the transfer of...

As shown by Rubinstein (1989, AER), in the two-player electronic mail game, players are better off if the extent to which they can check each other’s information, check each other’s information about each other’s information, etc., is limited. This paper investigates to what...

In social science the concept of ‘institution’ plays a very important role. There are, however, significant differences in the way the concept is interpreted by the different schools of thought. Within economics is a divide between Original Institutional Economics and New Institutional...

Using a game theoretical model on firms’ simultaneous investments in product and process innovation, we deduct and empirically test hypotheses on the optimal R&D portfolio, investment, performance, and dynamic efficiency of R&D for acquisitions and in independently competing firms. We use...

We investigate the size of the mark-up on the lending rate for endowment mortgages, due to expected prepayment by the borrower. For this type of mortgage, prepayment is mostly the result of mobility in the housing market. We control for the risk of default by using a unique data set of Dutch...

We compare the effect of trust and civic participation on self-assessed health across ten European countries. We find that, after controlling for a rich set of socio-economic characteristics, for actual health status and for health-related behaviours, trust has a significantly positive effect on...