In recent years, the private sector has been recognized as a key engine of Africa's economic development. Yet, the most simple and fundamental question remains unanswered: how large is the African private sector? We present novel estimates of the size of the private sector in 50 African...

In the first part of the paper I analyze a data set on teenage behavior. The data is a sample of high school students in the Netherlands, and contains information on teenage time use, income, expenditures, and subjective measures of well-being and self-esteem. As all students in a sampled class...

This paper replicates studies by Medoff and Abraham (1980, 1981) and Flabbi and Ichino (2001) using personnel data from the Dutch national aircraft manufacturer Fokker. It shows how a formal salary system, as is widely used by large firms, brings about that seniority-wage profiles are largely...

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on unemployment benefit sanctions. The experimental set-up allows us to distinguish between the effect of benefit sanctions once they are imposed (the ex post effect) and the effect that unemployed want to avoid getting a benefit sanction...

Self-reported work disability is analyzed in the US, the UK and the Netherlands. Different wordings of the questions lead to different work disability rates. But even if identical questions are asked, cross-country differences remain substantial. Respondent evaluations of work limitations of...

This paper evaluates the effects of two subsidies targeted at disadvantaged pupils in the Netherlands. The first scheme gives primary schools with at least 70 percent minority pupils extra funding for personnel. The second scheme gives primary schools with at least 70 percent pupils from...

Using the Dutch Labour Force Survey 1991-2001, the authors investigate the incidence of part-time employment in the country with the highest part-time employment rate of the OECD countries. Women fulfil most part-time jobs, but nevertheless a considerable fraction of men works part-time as well....

This paper analyzes data for a random sample drawn from the Dutch population who reveal their propensity to invest and reward investments in building up social capital by means of an economic experiment. We find substantial heterogeneity in the propensity to invest and in the propensity to...

In this paper we develop a structural model for job search behavior of students entering the labor market. The model includes endogenous search effort and on-the-job search. Since students usually do not start a regular job before graduation but start job search earlier, our model is non...

In this paper we investigate the dynamic adjustment of labour and capital in German and Dutch firms. The Dutch labour market is characterised by greater flexibility in wages and work arrangements in comparison to Germany. These institutional differences imply that employment dynamics in the two...