This article investigates empirically whether and to what extent initial capital constraints hinder entrepreneurial performance once the venture has been started. Prior empirical research in this area could investigate this issue only indirectly by lack of data. The key contribution of this...

This paper focuses on a new concern in the small firm’s literature, namely what makes a small firm stay in business for a long time. It reflects a change in economic policy, away from an emphasis on volume of start-ups to an emphasis on quality of start-ups. The basic hypothesis is that...

A recent literature has emerged providing compelling evidence that a major shift in the organization of the developed economies has been taking place: away from what has been characterized as the <I>managed economy</I> towards the <I>entrepreneurial economy</I>. In particular, the empirical evidence provides...</i></i>

Biased longevity expectations will lead to suboptimal decisions regarding saving, retirement, annuitization and health, with consequences for wellbeing in old age. Systematic differences in the accuracy of longevity expectations may partly explain heterogeneity in economic behaviour by education...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <I>Journal of Applied Econometrics</I> (2009). Volume 24, pages 1024-1046.<P> This paper aims to exp1ore the interre1ation between hea1th and work decisions of e1der1y workers, taking the various ways in which hea1th and work can influence each other...</p></i>

This paper estimates the health returns to education, using data on identical twins. I adopt a twin-differences strategy in order to obtain estimates that are not biased by unobserved family background and genetic traits that may affect both education and health. I further investigate to what...

The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context when banks may choose tail risk assets. We show that this undermines the traditional result that higher capital reduces excess risk-taking driven by limited liability. When capital raising is costly, poorly...

Total factor productivity of twenty OECD countries for a recent period (1971-2002) is explained using six different models based on the established literature. Traditionally, entrepreneurship is not dealt with in these models. In the present paper it is shown that – when this variable is added...

We apply the theory of inequality in opportunity to measure inequity in mortality. Ourempirical work is based on a rich dataset for the Netherlands (1998-2007), linking informationabout mortality, health events and lifestyles. We show that distinguishing between differentchannels via which...

Most empirical studies assume only monotonic preferences for households. Behavioral research however providessubstantial evidence that preferences for wealth are measured relative to a reference point. In this paper weintroduce and solve a two-period consumption and savings model for a...