This paper reports evidence that an individual meeting with a study counselor at high school significantly improves the quality of choice of tertiary educational field, as self-assessed 18 months after graduation from college. The results are strongest among males and those with low educated...

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...

Free school choice has often been argued to be a tide that lifts school quality through increased competition. This paper analyzes the underlying assumption that school quality is an important choice criterion for parents. Using a large and representative data set of over 15,000 Dutch primary...

This paper examines whether noncognitive skills - measured both by personality traits and economic preference parameters - influence cognitive tests performance. The basic idea is that noncognitive skills might affect the effort people put into a test to obtain good results. We experimentally...

This research provides an economic model of the way people behave during an IQ test. We distinguish a technology that describes how time investment improves performance from preferences that determine how much time people invest in each question. We disentangle these two elements empirically...

This paper introduces indicators about the division of labour to measure and interpret recent trends in the structure of employment in the Netherlands. Changes in the division of labour occur at three different levels: the level of the individual worker, the level of the industry and the spatial...

Evidence about job mobility outside the U.S. is scarce and difficult to compare cross-nationally because of non-uniform data. We document job mobility patterns of college graduates in their first three years in the labor market, using unique uniform data covering 11 European countries and Japan....

This paper reviews the recent literature on measuring and boosting cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture character skills: personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in...

After graduation many students start working in sectors not related to their field of study or participate in training targeted at work in other sectors. In this paper, we look at mobility immediately after graduation from the perspective that educational choices have been made when these pupils...

This paper develops a framework to understand the role of interpersonal interactions in the labor market including task assignment and wages. Effective interpersonal interactions involve caring, to establish cooperation, and at the same time directness, to communicate in an unambiguous way. The...