We study entrepreneurs’ behavioral responses of effort (moral hazard) to avoid business failure.This is done in the context of an unemployment insurance scheme for self-employed, wherewe estimate how much of the transition probability to unemployment can be causally attributedto being insured....

We simulate the effect of the introduction of premium differentiation (experience rating) in the Dutch Unemployment Insurance system on the demand for labor for a variety of sectors in the Dutch economy. For the simulations we use the Bentolila and Bertola (1990) framework as a point of...

Availability of (partial) insurance mechanisms is arguably important for the decision of (riskaverse) workers to start up a risky entrepreneurial venture. Using administrative data from Denmark, where unemployment insurance (UI) is available to both wage earners and self-employed on a voluntary...

Using a country-industry panel dataset (EUKLEMS) we uncover a robust empirical regularity, namely that high-risk innovative sectors are relatively smaller in countries with strict employment protection legislation (EPL). To understand the mechanism, we develop a two-sector matching model where...

This paper studies the relevance of social interactions among the unemployed. Identification is based on a salient and selective extension of the potential duration of unemployment benefits. If social interactions are important, this policy change affects entitled individuals not only directly,...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2010.01002.x/abstract">'Journal of the European Economic Association'</A>, 9(1), 106-29.<p>This paper investigates the effects of intensified screening of disability insurance benefit applications. A large-scale experiment was setup where in 2 of the 26 Dutch regions case workers...</p></a>

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292112001493">'European Economic Review'</A> 2013, 58, 31-57.<P> In this paper, we use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement...</p></a>

In this paper we estimate, for the 1989-93 period in Belgium, the effect of vocational classroom training on therate of transition out of unemployment. We show that rationing of the demand for training increases theunemployment duration of non-participants, an effect neglected in programme...

We include initial holdings in the jungle economy of Piccione and Rubinstein (Economic Journal, 2007) in which the unique equilibrium satisfies lexicographic welfare maximization. When we relax assumptions on consumption sets and preferences slightly, equilibria other than lexicographic welfare...

This paper has a twofold objective. First, we develop a new method to assess the monetary valuefor individuals of external effects. The method makes use of an ordinal index of life satisfaction asscored by individual respondents who are subjected in varying intensity to the external effect....