In 2012, a new law allowed firms in Portugal to reduce the overtime premium paid by half. Until then, as in other countries, premiums were subject to a minimum level. We analyse matched panel data, including worker-level (base and overtime) hours and pay, to study the effects of the resulting...

We evaluate the impact of hiring subsidies for unemployed jobseekers in Wallonia, the Frenchspeaking region in the south of Belgium. The special feature of these subsidies is that they are more readily available for low-educated youths, who are eligible from registration as a jobseeker or a few...

This chapter provides a state-of-the-art literature review about research that aims to explain the return, repeat, circular and onward migration of the highly-skilled migrants around the world. After it describes the status quo in the knowledge economy and the international race for talent, it...

Ample empirical evidence has found that access to childcare for preschool children increases mothers’ labor force participation and employment. In this paper, we investigate whether increased childcare for primary school children improves the quality of jobs mothers find by estimating the...

Amidst the rapid global spread of Covid-19, many governments enforced country-wide lockdowns, with likely severe well-being consequences. The actions by governments triggered a debate on whether the well-being and economic costs of a lockdown surpass the benefits perceived from a lower infection...

This paper estimates Markov switching models with daily happiness (GNH) data from New Zealand for a period inclusive of the Covid-19 global health pandemic. This helps us understand the dynamics of happiness due to an external shock and provides valuable information about its future evolution....

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments have implemented lockdown regulations to curb the spread of the virus. Though lockdowns do minimise the physical damage of the virus, there may be substantial damage to population well-being. Using a pooled dataset, this paper analyses...

The pursuit of happiness. What does that mean? Perhaps a more prominent question to ask is, 'how does one know whether people have succeeded in their pursuit'? Survey data, thus far, has served us well in determining where people see themselves on their journey. However, in an everchanging...

Despite being a regular suspect, a causal role of residents’ emotions in predicting their opposition to international immigration has not been investigated. Using the individual-level panel data from Germany, we study the impact of the individual’s experience of negative emotions (sadness,...

The first pandemic of the 21st century has brought Pyrrhic attention to one of the era’s greatest megatrends – population ageing. Today rich countries are disproportionately affected but increasingly the world’s elderly are residents of developing countries. In rich and poor countries...