Both school level and individual student level data indicate that information on highschool quality published by a national newspaper affects school choice in the Netherlands. The positive effects are particularly large for the academic school track. First, we study the causal effect of...

This paper investigates the effect of obtaining an individual research grant (Vernieuwingsimpuls or IRI -grant) on the careers of Dutch scientists. <strong>The main goal of this scheme of the Dutch Research Council is to provide relatively young, talented scientists with appealing career opportunities...</strong>

in this paper we investigate the individual returns to a doctorate education in the Netherlands over the first twenty years of a career. We compare monthly incomes of PhDs to that of Master graduates with the same years of experience, gender and field of study and who took the same time to...

This paper provides unique survey evidence on consumer awareness about deposit insurance and on consumer perception of the stability of small and systemic banks. It turns out that systemic banks are perceived as less risky compared to non-systemic banks and that respondents’ own bank is...

The paper focuses on the relationship between competition and quality in the Dutch hospital sector. We analyse the period of 2004-2008, in which a healthcare reform took place in the Netherlands, introducing competition in the healthcare sector. The increased attention to hospital quality and...

This CPB Discussion Paper studies a conditional block grant that Dutch municipalities receive for welfare-to-work programs. Many municipalities do not fully use this grant, although programs are beneficial for them. We argue that municipalities incur expenses to use the grant. If these costs...

We analyze the incentive effects of performance-based contracts, as well as their impacts on provider job placement rates, using unique data on Dutch cohorts of unemployed and disabled workers that were assigned to private social-welfare providers in 2002-2005. In a growing number of...

We analyse the causal effect of education on starting and quitting smoking, using longitudinal data of Australian twins. We take into account the endogeneity of education, censoring of smoking durations and the timing of starting smoking versus that of completing education by using the flexible...

This paper contributes to the broad literature on public services contracting in two ways: We provide an empirical analysis of contracting decisions in the provision of welfare-to-work (WTW) services, and we explicitly model two forms of external provision of WTW services by municipalities. We...

As from 1997, the national newspaper Trouw has published quality scores of secondary schools in every year, using information of the schools inspectorate on, amongst other things, the average grades at the final examinations and the throughput of pupils in lower forms. How do schools respond to...