The authors analyze a general search model with on-the-job search and sorting of heterogeneous workers into heterogeneous jobs. This model yields a simple relationship between (i) the unemployment rate, (ii) the value of non-market time, and (iii) the max-mean wage differential. The latter...

The Great Recession has caused unemployment in the Netherlands to rise from 3.1% in 2008 to over 7% at the beginning of 2014. Structural imbalances caused by labour mismatch could be one of the explanations underlying this high rate. The goal of this paper is to examine this hypothesis. We...

This paper studies the effect of firm closures for prime-age and older workers. Administrative data on the Dutch labour force are used to follow a sample of Dutch workers who lost their jobs due to firm closures in the period 2000 - 2009. Applying difference-in-difference techniques and using a...

The particular situation of the youngest and oldest individuals on the labour market motivates age-specific labour market analysis. One topical case is employment protection for older workers. The effect of employment protection on the total number of jobs is ambiguous. The positive effect of...

This paper investigates the effects of education vouchers for teachers. We study effects on enrollment and completion of higher education programs, and on the retention of teachers in the education sector. We do this by exploiting a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Read also the...

The market for higher education increasingly becomes an international market. Nowadays, the number of students studying abroad is substantial and increasing. Many governments stimulate students to study abroad by offering a wide range of grants. However, little is known on the returns to...

Based on micro-data on individual workers for the period 2000–2005, we show that regional wage differentials in the Netherlands are small but present. A large part of these differentials can be attributed to individual characteristics of workers. Remaining effects are partially...

During the last twenty years the share of researchers in the workforce has been rising in OECD countries. In the same period, the distribution of schooling has become more equal. This paper proposes that the rise in the proportion of researchers is caused by the decline in schooling...

In the Dutch economic policy debate, wage moderation is widely considered as a key factor for achieving economic growth and low unemployment. However, some economists criticise the policy emphasis on wage moderation, claiming that high wages are needed to maintain structural labour productivity...

In 1982, duration of university education in the Netherlands decreased from five to four years. This institutional reform is exploited for estimating the causal effect of one year of university education on wages in 1997. Wages of employees who enrolled just before or after the reform are...