This paper outlines why program evaluation should follow well-respected scientific standards and why it should be performed by independent researchers.

The transition process in Central and Eastern Europe was associated with growing environmental awareness. This paper analyses the determinants of Pollution Abatement and Control Expenditure (PACE) at plant level in the case of Romania using survey data and a Multilevel Regression Model (MRM)....

In this paper we investigate how the expulsion of a player influences the outcome of a football match. Common sense implies a negative impact for the affected team. However, an old football myth suggests that such an expulsion might also be beneficial since it increases the team spirit as well...

Labor markets in low- and middle income countries are characterized by high levels of informality. A multitude of interventions have therefore been implemented in many countries with the objective to increase the formalization of firms and workers, including information campaigns, simplification...

Recently, there has been much discussion about replicability and credibility. By integrating the full research record, increasing statistical power, reducing bias and enhancing credibility, meta-analysis is widely regarded as 'best evidence'. Through Monte Carlo simulation, closely calibrated on...

Many OECD countries are reforming their pension systems. We investigate how pension eligibility affects labor supply in couples. Inspired by a theoretical framework, we measure how the sharp change in the pension eligibility of both partners affects labor force participation.We find that both...

Matching has become a popular approach to estimate average treatment effects. It is based on the conditional independence or unconfoundedness assumption. Checking the sensitivity of the estimated results with respect to deviations from this identifying assumption has become an increasingly...

This paper evaluates the effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany. Since previous empirical studies of these measures have been based on relatively small datasets and focussed on East Germany, this is the first study which allows to draw policy-relevant...

In this paper we estimate the effect of early life health on home care use later in life, and we analyse whether this effect is mediated through household composition. We use Dutch administrative data on men born in 1944-1947 who were examined for military service between 1961-1965 and we link...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between p-hacking and data-sharing policies for published articles. We collect 38,876 test statistics from 1,106 articles published in leading economic journals between 2002 2020. While a data-sharing policy increases the provision of research data to...