Anchoring vignettes are increasingly used to identify and correct heterogeneity in the reporting of health, work disability, life satisfaction, political efficacy, etc. with the aim of improving interpersonal comparability of subjective indicators of these constructs. The method relies on two...

Reliance on self-rated health to proxy medical need can bias estimation of education-related inequity in health care utilisation. We correct this bias both by instrumenting self-rated health with objective health indicators and by purging self-rated health of reporting heterogeneity identified...

Rapid urbanization could have positive and negative health effects, such that the net impact on population health is not obvious. It is, however, highly pertinent to the human welfare consequences of development. This paper uses community and individual level longitudinal data from the China...

Empirical research suggests that - rather than improving incentives - exerting control can reduce workers' performance by eroding motivation. The present paper shows that intention-based reciprocity can cause such motivational crowding-out if individuals differ in their propensity for...

Since the early nineties, the Dutch tax system allows for a tax-favored form of risk free savings through employer- sponsored savings plans (ESSPs). Under some conditions and up to a certain amount, the contributions to this plan are tax-deductible, and the returns as well as the withdrawals are...

Education is argued to be an important driver of the decision to start a business. The measurement of its influence, however, is difficult since it is considered to be an endogenous variable. This study accounts for this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach

We propose a consistent utility-based framework to jointly explain a household's decisions on purchase incidence, brand choice and purchase quantity. The approach differs from other approaches, currently available in the literature, as it is able to take into account consumption dynamics. In the...

In the Netherlands auditors can be trained in a part-time educational track in which students combine working and studying or in a full-time educational track. The former training is relatively firm-specific whereas the latter training is relatively general. Applying human capital theory, we...

Using Italian data, we estimate an option value model to quantify the effect

Boards of directors face the twin task of disciplining and screening executives. To perform these tasks directors do not have detailed information about executives' behaviour, and only infrequently have information about the success or failure of initiated strategies, reorganizations, mergers...