The concept of benchmarking, originally developed as a tool to improve the performance of business enterprises by learning from others' "best practice", is now increasingly applied in the areas of employment and social policy. Rising internal and external pressures on national welfare states,...

This study examines households’ financial situation around the time of births using a panel of Dutch households over the period 1987-1993. I find that at all levels of education households accumulate wealth before and draw on their liquid savings after having given birth to their first child....

When formal institutions are unfavorable for the development of a free market economy, one reaction in many countries is a spontaneous development of informal economies. This study analyzes the conditions for the informal sector to emerge in a transition country, to wit, Albania. The...

This paper discusses the “flexibility-security nexus” which has become manifest in employment, the labour market and industrial relations. The starting point of the paper is the concept of “flexicurity”, viewed as a particular way of dealing with the aforementioned nexus. The analysis...

A field survey of households was conducted in Tirana, Albania in 2000. A response rate of 89.3% yielded 1.340 valid questionnaires, allowing us to test Feige's (1997) conjecture that more tax evasion will be observed, when formal and informal institutions clash. Respondents' attitudes towards...

We examine the variance-covariance structure of log-wages over time and over the lifecycle of British men from 1975 to 2001, hereby controlling for cohort effects. Wage inequality has risen sharply during the 1980’s and early 1990’s and remained fairly constant in the second half of the...

Using a large panel of administrative records on unemployment durations this study confirms the predictions of the ranking model of Blanchard and Diamond (1994) that an individual’s probability of leaving unemployment decreases with unemployment duration and increases with labour market...

A series of experiments among different social groups in both Albania and the Netherlands give the opportunity to compare behavioral patterns related to tax evasion. Aside from the decision whether or not to evade taxes, subjects have to choose a source of income, where one type enables...