This paper surveys migration to and from the Netherlands since thesixteenth century with an emphasis on the post-war period. Existingstudies on the labour market performance of immigrants and ethnicminorities are considered and some new results from our recentresearch are presented.

What drives stated preferences about the number of foreigners? Is it self-interest as stressed by the political economy of immigration? Does social interaction affect this preference or is the immigration preference completely in line with the preference for the aggregate population size? In...

Ethnicity has become an increasingly important factor in neighborhood formation in many developed economies. We specify a gravity model for neighborhoods to assess the role of ethnicity in intra-urban residential relocations. Migration patterns of different ethnic groups are hypothesized to...

This paper studies mandatory job-search periods for welfare applicants. During this period the benefits application is put on hold and the applicant is obliged to make job applications. We combine a randomized experiment with detailed administrative data to investigate the effects of imposing a...

This paper assesses the effects of changes in scoring weights in auctions, using a unique sample of biddings of private Welfare-to-Work (WTW) organizations to reintegrate groups of unemployed and disabled workers. WTW-organizations did not only bid on prices, but also received points for three...

This paper examines the effect of a housing assistance program on school enrollment, child labor and poverty reduction among poor families in Ecuador. Administrative data is merged to a household panel to link the history of a voucher application with socioeconomic information. Two empirical...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of an intervention that was targeted at a specific group of Dutch Social Assistance (SA) recipients with debt problems. With a large share of the income gains of work resumption were transferred to the creditors, these individuals experienced a strong a...

We investigate whether publicly subsidized long-term care (LTC) is allocated according to needs, independently from income, using administrative data from all applicants for public LTC in Catalonia, from 2011 to 2014. We measure the level of horizontal inequity in subsidies to compensate...

The old-age security motive for fertility postulates that people's needs for old-age support raise the demand for children. We test this widespread idea using the extension of social pensions in Namibia during the nineties. The reform eliminated inequalities in pension coverage and benefit...

Unemployment remains a major economic and social problem in many developedeconomies. Thispaper provides theoretical and empirical perspectives on the impact of labourmarket deregulation as a means of combatting unemployment and of enhancing competitivewage determination. The paper focusses...