We study voting over higher education finance in an economy with two regions and two separated labor markets. Households dffer in their financial endowment and their children's ability. Non-students are immobile. Students decide where to study; they return home after graduation with exogenous...

A large and highly used number of treatment effects estimators rely on the unconfoundedness assumption ("selection on observables") which is fundamentally non testable. When evaluating the effects of labor market policies, researchers need to observe both variables that affect treatment...

We provide an overidentification test for a nonparametric treatment model where individuals are allowed to select into treatment based on unobserved gains. Our test can be used to test the validity of instruments in a framework with essential heterogeneity (Imbens and Angrist 1994). The...

We analyse the impact of retraining for the unemployed on future labour market success, and estimate effects separately for different target occupations. We use German registry data and apply statistical matching methods. The results show that on average, after a period with strong lock-in...

Are there negative health effects from losing the job? We analyze the causal effect of job displacement on diabetes incidence and prevalence. Type 2 diabetes is an illness that is directly affected by lifestyle factors and psychosocial stress, and with severe side-effects deteriorating the...

Start-up subsidies for the unemployed have become an important part of Active Labor Market Policy (ALMP) in many countries. Previous evaluation results show pre-dominantly (very) positive results indicating that these programs are an effective way to increase employment probabilities and income...

Empirical studies analyzing the determinants of U.S. presidential popularity have delivered quite inconclusive results concerning the role of economic variables by assuming linear relationships. We employ penalized spline smoothing in the context of semi-parametric additive mixed models and...

This paper aims at formulating econometric tools for investigating stochastic rationality, using the Random Utility Models (RUM) to deal with unobserved heterogeneity nonparametrically. Theoretical implications of the RUM have been studied in the literature, and in particular this paper utilizes...

This study explores the reduction potential of greenhouse gases for major pollution emitting countries of the world using nonparametric productivity measurement methods and directional distance functions. In contrast to the existing literature we apply optimization methods to endogenously...