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...

The Great Recession is characterized by a GDP-decline that was unprecedented in the past decades. This paper discusses the implications of the Great Recession analyzing labor market data from 20 OECD countries. Comparing the Great Recession with the 1980s recession it is concluded that there is...

This paper studies the causes and consequences of in-season changes of the headcoach of association football teams. We exploit data from the highest level of<br/>Dutch professional football during 14 successive seasons. An in-season change of<br/>the head-coach depends on recent match results and the...

Cannabis is the most popular illegal drug. Its legal status is typically justified on<br/>the grounds that cannabis use has harmful consequences. Empirically investigating<br/>this issue has been a fertile topic for research in recent times. We provide an<br/>overview of this literature, focusing on studies...

Many immigrants in the Netherlands have poor Dutch language skills. They face problems in speaking and reading Dutch. Our paper investigates how these problems affect their labor market performance in terms of employment, hours of work and wages. We find that for female immigrants language...

Using fixed effects ordered logit estimation, we investigate the relationship between part-time work and working hours satisfaction; job satisfaction; and life satisfaction. We account for interdependence within the family using data on partnered men and women from the British Household Panel...

Pianists who achieve high scores in the Queen Elizabeth musical competition are rewarded by subsequent success. This is not surprising in itself, but it is not immediately clear whether this is caused by the score or because those who have high scores are better pianists. Data on eleven...

We provide a unified discussion of the relations among flows of workers, changes in employment and changes in the number of jobs at the level of the firm. Using the only available set of data (a nationally representative sample of Dutch firms in 1988 and 1990) we discover that: 1) Nearly half of...

Little is known about the search strategy that employers use in their efforts to fill job vacancies. In this article, the authors analyze unique micro data to study this search strategy. They conclude that almost all vacancies are filled from a pool of applicants that is formed shortly after the...

This paper uses the flow approach to investigate the way in which the transition of the Czech and Slovak economies influences the regional labour markets in the two countries. From estimates of matching functions we conclude that in most regions the labour markets are still in transition. We...