This paper develops a novel approach to the economic evaluation of public policies: participatory value evaluation (PVE). PVE involves citizens directly in decisions of the government, taking into account governmental and individual budget constraints. Citizens receive reliable information on...

Since the early nineties, the Dutch tax system allows for a tax-favored form of risk free savings through employer-sponsored savings plans (ESSPs). Under some conditions and up to a certain amount, the contributions to this planare tax-deductible, and the returns as well as the withdrawals are...

Previous studies have shown that an oath can reduce lying at an individual level. Can oaths reduce lying in groups, a context where the prevalence of lying is typically higher? Results from a lab experiment reveal that the impact of an oath on lying in a group context depends on the incentive...

We study entrepreneurs’ behavioral responses of effort (moral hazard) to avoid business failure.This is done in the context of an unemployment insurance scheme for self-employed, wherewe estimate how much of the transition probability to unemployment can be causally attributedto being insured....

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...

Anchoring vignettes are increasingly used to identify and correct heterogeneity in the reporting of health, work disability, life satisfaction, political efficacy, etc. with the aim of improving interpersonal comparability of subjective indicators of these constructs. The method relies on two...

Using Italian data, we estimate an option value model to quantify the effectof financial incentives on retirement choices. As far as we know, this isthe first empirical study to estimate the conditional multiple-years modelput forward by Stock and Wise (1990). This implies that we account...

We propose a consistent utility-based framework to jointly explain a household's decisions on purchase incidence, brand choice and purchase quantity. The approach differs from other approaches, currently available in the literature, as it is able to take into account consumption dynamics. In the...

In the Netherlands auditors can be trained in a part-time educational track in which students combine working and studying or in a full-time educational track. The former training is relatively firm-specific whereas the latter training is relatively general. Applying human capital theory, we...

Availability of (partial) insurance mechanisms is arguably important for the decision of (riskaverse) workers to start up a risky entrepreneurial venture. Using administrative data from Denmark, where unemployment insurance (UI) is available to both wage earners and self-employed on a voluntary...