In this paper, we decompose worldwide PISA mathematics and reading scores. While mathematics scores are still tilted towards boys, girls have a larger advantage in reading over boys. Girls’ disadvantage in mathematics is increasing over the distribution of talents. Our decomposition shows that...

Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers older than 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on...

The public employment service (PES) makes use in many countries of vacancy referrals as to facilitate the matching between unemployed workers and vacancies. Based on a “timing-of-events” approach to control for selective participation, this study evaluates whether this policy instrument...