We study risk-based selection into a voluntary unemployment insurance (UI) scheme. To disentangle behavioral effects from selection, we exploit variation in the sign-up induced by an early retirement scheme embedded into the UI system. We combine an event study with a difference-in-difference...

Availability of (partial) insurance mechanisms is arguably important for the decision of (riskaverse) workers to start up a risky entrepreneurial venture. Using administrative data from Denmark, where unemployment insurance (UI) is available to both wage earners and self-employed on a voluntary...

We study risk behavior of Danish self-employed entrepreneurs, whose income risk may be driven by both exogenous factors and effort choice (moral hazard). Partial insurance is available through voluntary unemployment insurance (UI). Additional incentives to sign insurance contracts stem from a...

We test whether households that face prospective home equity losses during a house price downturn use divorce to shed debt. We study the Dutch context, where qualifying homeowners can buy into a mortgage guarantee scheme that insures the lender against borrower default and transfers the risk to...

Since the early nineties, the Dutch tax system allows for a tax-favored form of risk free savings through employer-sponsored savings plans (ESSPs). Under some conditions and up to a certain amount, the contributions to this planare tax-deductible, and the returns as well as the withdrawals are...

This paper uses micro data from four OECD countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands), to assess the determinants of household debt holding and to investigate whether or not credit constraints are important for household debt holding. We extend the existing literature in...

This discussion paper led to a publication in href=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jae.1071/fullJournal of Applied Econometrics, 24(6), 993-1023.Parents’ transfer motives are important for understanding, e.g., macroeconomics, income (re)distribution, savings, and public finance....

We study entrepreneurs’ behavioral responses of effort (moral hazard) to avoid business failure.This is done in the context of an unemployment insurance scheme for self-employed, wherewe estimate how much of the transition probability to unemployment can be causally attributedto being insured....

In this paper, we use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement and sickness/disability benefits. The reform, becoming effective on January 1st 2004, required the...

This paper uses panel data from the pan-European SHARE survey to study labor market behavior of older male self-employed vis-a-vis wage employed workers. We find the self-employed to work longer hours, to be more flexible in their hours allocation, and to retire later in all countries. We relate...