This discussion paper has resulted in ch. 4 of <A href="http://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=edksC0nRPZYC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=allesintitel:+%22Labor+Market+Institutions+and+Public+Regulation%22&ots=-umxBkjdnT&sig=oeFDTjhnSeo-w-4nuTjTJpuaUr8#v=onepage&q=&f=false">'Labor Market Institutions and Public Regulation'</A>, pp. 123-61, (Jonas Agell, Michael Keen, Alfons Weichenrieder (eds.)), 2004, MIT Press, 228 p.

We develop a new perspective on the boundary of the firm that is consistent with the empirical observation that the share of entrepreneurs first decreases and then increases in the course of economic development. Existing theory based on transaction costs is difficult to relate to these...

This paper examines the small world hypothesis. The first part of the paper presents empirical evidence on the evolution of a particular world: the world of journal publishing economists during the period 1970-2000. We find that in the 1970's the world of economics was a collection of islands....

Promoting investments in energy saving technologies is an important means for achieving environmental goals. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence on success conditions of policies is scarce. Based on a survey among Dutch firms, this paper sets out to identify the factors that determine the...

The Dutch drinking water sector experienced two drastic changes over the last 10 years. Firstly, in 1997, the sector association started with a voluntary benchmarking aimed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the sector. Secondly, merger activity arose. This paper develops a tailored...

In this laboratory experiment we study the use of strategic ignorance to delegate real authority within a firm. A worker can gather information on investment projects, while a manager makes the implementation decision. The manager can monitor the worker. This allows her to better exploit the...

This paper presents evidence about the impact on school enrollment of a program in Ecuador that gives cash transfers to the 40 percent poorest families. The evaluation design consists of a randomized experiment for families around the first quintile of the poverty index and of a regression...