Providing income support to unemployed education-leavers reduces the returns to investments in education because it makes the consequences of unemployment less severe. We evaluate a two-part policy reform in Belgium to study whether conditioning the prospective entitlement to unemployment...

This article introduces the metaphor of the iceberg in the labour market. While policy in most OECD countries has historically focussed on reducing unemployment (the tip of the iceberg), the group of inactive people (below the waterline) is much larger. Therefore, we point to the clear...

A new technological epoch is underway – the so-called Machine Age –reflecting advances in artificial intelligence, digitalisation and Big Data. Some commentators have claimed that this epoch is different from previous ones in that it will produce large-scale technological unemployment, while...

This survey organizes and discusses the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of university student achievements. According to the theoretical framework, the decision to invest in tertiary education is a sequential process made under gradually decreasing levels of uncertainty...

A large body of literature shows that first-generation immigrants born in developing countries experience a higher likelihood of being overeducated than natives (i.e. immigrant overeducation). However, evidence is remarkably scarce when it comes to the overeducation of second-generation...

This article discusses the evolution of key labour market indicators in the EU-27 countries between 2019 and 2020, i.e. between the year before the covid-19 crisis broke out and the year in which it impacted the economy heavily. Whereas earlier policy-oriented studies have dealt with the...

We use (donut) regression discontinuity design and difference-in-differences estimators to estimate the impact of a one-shot hiring subsidy targeted at low-educated unemployed youths during the Great Recession recovery in Belgium. The subsidy increases job-finding in the private sector by 10...

This paper surveys the theoretical approaches used in the literature to study the phenomenon of delayed graduation and university dropout. The classical human capital model does not contemplate failure, which the amended human capital model does. Delayed graduation and university dropout are two...

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...