We study a class of scheduling problems involving the maximumlateness criterion and an element of batching. For all the problemsthat we examine, algorithms appear in the literature which consistof a sorting step to determine an optimal job sequence, followedby a dynamic programming step which...

In 1997 two papers new applying the metaheuristics Tabu Search (TS) and Heuristic Concentration (HC) tothe p-median problem were published in consecutive volumes of the European Journal of OperationalResearch. Here we apply the method of HC some of the data sets which were used for...

The quality of public management is a recurrent concern in many countries. Calls to attract the economy's best and brightest managers to the public sector abound. This paper studies self-selection into managerial and non-managerial positions in the public and private sector, using a model of a...

Education is argued to be an important driver of the decision to start a business. The measurement of its influence, however, is difficult since it is considered to be an endogenous variable. This study accounts for this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approachand a data set of...

Trade unions tend to reduce the dispersion of wages among their members. Skilled workers may therefore have an incentive to separate from an encompassing union and organize into a separate craft union. In this paper, we examine a theoretical model to gain insight into the determinants of the...

This paper analyzes the determinants of choosing a technical study at university level and of persistence in it. We find that - in the Netherlands - there is a low correlation between the probability of a student choosing a technical study and the probability of persistence in it. This implies...