This paper provides experimental estimates of the impact of a voucher for private care within the Nordic system of universal provision of public care. The private daycare voucher acted as a significant boost for new daycare entrepreneurs to enter the market thus increasing the overall daycare...

This paper addresses a lack of evidence on the impact of performance pay in the public sector by evaluating a pilot scheme of incentives in a major government agency. The incentive scheme was based on teams and covered quantity and quality targets, measured with varying degrees of precision. We...

This study evaluates the effectiveness of contracting out mandatory publicly provided counselling and training for long-term unemployed in Flanders (Belgium) to private for-profit and non-profit organisations (FPOs and NPOs). A multivariate transition model exploits timing-of-events and novel...

Based on a unique case study-dataset, the paper analyses job satisfaction and public service motivation in Germany. A special issue of the investigation is related to the evaluation of performance pay scales that were introduced some years ago to German public employees within the frame of...

In response to the record-breaking COVID19 recession, many governments have adopted unprecedented fiscal stimuli. While countercyclical fiscal policy is effective in fighting conventional recessions, little is known about the effectiveness of fiscal policy in the current environment with...

Our paper provides some of the first evidence on the effect of the Head Start funding expansions on program inputs. We take advantage of the county-year variation in funding increases that were implemented due to a number of legislated policy changes in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s....

Against the background of the current discussion on the introduction of statutory minimum wages in Germany, this paper analyzes the potential employment and fiscal effects of such a policy. Based on estimated labor demand elasticities obtained from a structural labor demand model, the empirical...

The literature on remittances is large and growing. However, its focus has mainly been on the effects of remittance inflows on the receiving economies. Little has been done on the sending economies. In this paper, we use data from Saudi Arabia, one of the top remitting countries in the world, to...

Covid-19 and the measures taken to contain it have led to unprecedented constraints on work and leisure activities, across the world. This paper uses nationally representative surveys to document how people of different ages and incomes have been affected across six countries (China, South...