This paper analyzes whether defaults affect the choice for courses followed at work. In addition, we analyze whether the size of the default effect varies with employees' personality and skill-deficiencies. We perform an experiment in which workers are hypothetically offered three courses which...

This paper investigates whether employers can induce employees to postpone retirement by offering access to training courses that maintain job proficiency. We use unique, matched employer–employee surveys for the Dutch public sector, which include detailed information on a wide range of HR...

This paper examines the role of lifelong learning in counteracting skill depreciation and obsolescence. We build on findings showing that different skill types have structurally different depreciation rates. We differentiate between occupations with more hard skills versus more soft skills. To...

In this paper, we formulate and estimate a structural model of post-schooling training that explicitly allows for possible complementarity between initial schooling levels and returns to training. Precisely, the wage outcome equation depends on accumulated schooling and on the incidence of...

Time-use researchers are typically interested in the time use of individuals, but time use data are samples of person-days. Given day-to-day variation in how people spend their time, this distinction is analytically important. We examine the conditions necessary to make inferences about the time...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

This paper presents an experimentally validated survey module to measure six key economic preferences – risk aversion, discounting, trust, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity – in a reliable, parsimonious and cost-effective way. The survey instruments included in the module were the...

Kapteyn and Ypma (Journal of Labour Economics 2007) is an influential study of errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings. To fit their mixture models, Kapteyn and Ypma assume a specific fraction of their sample have error-free earnings. Using a new UK dataset, we assess the...

We investigate how worries in Germany change across time and age, drawing on both closed-ended questions (which typically list a number of worry items) and open-ended questions answered in text format. We find that relevant world events influence worries. For example, worries about peace peaked...

We describe methods of combining administrative and survey data to improve the measurement of income. We begin by decomposing the total survey error in the mean of survey reports of dollars received from a government transfer program. We decompose this error into three parts, generalized...