Previous empirical studies on the effect of age on productivity and wages find contradicting results. Some studies find that if workers grow older there is an increasing gap between productivity and wages, i.e. wages increase with age while productivity does not or does not increase at the same...

We study how changes in the maximum benefit duration affect the inflow into unemployment in the Netherlands. Until August 2003, workers who became unemployed after age 57.5 were entitled to unemployment benefits until the age of 65, after which they would receive old age pensions. This...

This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of benefit sanctions, i.e. temporary reductions in unemployment benefits as punishment for noncompliance with eligibility requirements. In addition to the effects on unemployment durations, we evaluate the effects on post-unemployment employment...

For various reasons the relationship between age and productivity is a matter of policy concern. I present new empirical research showing how productivity is affected by age. I study age effects at the individual level by analyzing data on running and publishing in economic journals. Furthermore...

In an experimental setting some Danish unemployed workers were assigned to an activation program while others were not. Unemployed who were assigned to the activation program found a job more quickly. We show that the activation effect increases with the distance between the place of residence...

This paper investigates how winning a substantial lottery prize affects labor supply. Analyzing data from Dutch State Lottery winners, we find that earnings are affected but not employment. Lottery prize winners reduce their hours of work but they are not very likely to withdraw from the labor...

If two partners smoke, their quit behavior may be related through correlation in unobserved individual characteristics and common external shocks. However, there may also be a causal effect whereby the quit behavior of one partner is affected by the quit decision of the other partner. We use...

Our paper revisits Okun's relationship between observed unemployment rates and output gaps. We include in the relationship the effect of labour market institutions as well as age and gender e ects. Our empirical analysis is based on 20 OECD countries over the period 1985-2013. We find that the...

Many immigrants in the Netherlands have poor Dutch language skills. They face problems in speaking and reading Dutch. Our paper investigates how these problems affect their labor market performance in terms of employment, hours of work and wages. We find that for female immigrants language...

The Great Recession is characterized by a GDP-decline that was unprecedented in the past decades. This paper discusses the implications of the Great Recession analyzing labor market data from 20 OECD countries. Comparing the Great Recession with the 1980s recession it is concluded that there is...