This paper studies optimal income taxation in an environment where matching frictions generate a trade-off for workers between high wages and low unemployment risk. A higher marginal tax rate shifts the trade-off in favor of low unemployment risk, whereas a higher tax burden or unemployment...

We study risk-based selection into a voluntary unemployment insurance (UI) scheme. To disentangle behavioral effects from selection, we exploit variation in the sign-up induced by an early retirement scheme embedded into the UI system. We combine an event study with a differencein-difference...

We test economic and sociological theories for the relationship between employment and crime, where social welfare is used as an identifying mechanism. We consider a sample of disadvantaged males from The Netherlands who are observed between ages 18 and 32 on a monthly time scale. We...

Public programs often use statistical profiling to assess the risk that applicants will become long-term dependent on the program. The literature uses linear probability models and (Cox) proportional hazard models to predict duration outcomes. These either focus on one threshold duration or...

This paper reviews the empirical research that has been generated by Oswald’s thesis, which claims that there is a causal relationship from homeownership to unemployment. The literature confirms a decreasing effect of homeownership on geographical mobility of workers, but does not in general...

Is moving to the countryside a credible commitment device for couples? Weinvestigate whether lowering the arrival rate of potential alternative partners bymoving to a less populated area lowers the dissolution risk for a sample of Danishcouples. We find that of the couples who married in the...

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurship (as measured by fluctuations in the business ownership rate) and unemployment in Japan for the period between 1972 and 2002. We find that, although Japan’s unemployment rate has been influenced by specific exogenous shocks, the...

We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increase job search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influences the arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workers send out....

This paper analyzes the impact of corporate taxes on structural unemployment, using an applied general equilibrium model for the European Union. We find that the unemployment and welfare effects of corporate taxes differ considerably among European countries. The magnitude of these effects rise...

Labor markets in Western countries are becoming more and more flexible, thereby meeting the needs of employers. Yet the new flexibility also offers opportunities to workers, while at the same time bears the risk of long-term exclusion. This paper deals with unequal chances on the contemporary...