We analyze a large stratified random sample of firms that provide us with measures of performance and each firm’s top manager’s perception of the severity of business environment constraints faced by his/her firm. Unlike most existing studies that rely on external and aggregated proxy...

This study aims at estimating the stigma effect of unemployment and overeducation within one framework. To this end, we conduct a field experiment in the Belgian labour market. We send out trios of fictitious male job applications to real vacancies. These applications differ only by the labour...

In this paper we present and test a theory of how political corruption, found in many transition and emerging market economies, affects corporate governance and productive efficiency of firms. Our model predicts that underdeveloped democratic institutions that do not punish political corruption...

This article decomposes the observed gaps in educational attainment and school-to-work transitions between grandchildren of natives and immigrants in Belgium into (i) differences in observed family endowments and (ii) a residual "pure ethnic gap". It innovates by explicitly taking delays in...

We evaluate the effectiveness of wage subsidies as a policy instrument to integrate disabled individuals into the labour market. To identify causal effects, we conduct a large-scale field experiment in Belgium. Our results show that the likelihood of a disabled candidate receiving a positive...

In this letter we present a laboratory experiment to assess the relative and independent effect of perceived attractiveness and personality traits on hiring decisions. Our results indicate that attractiveness and conscientiousness, followed by emotional stability, are important drivers of...

We identify hiring discrimination against former juvenile delinquents in a direct way. To this end we conduct a field experiment in the Belgian labour market. We find that labour market discrimination is indeed a major barrier in the transition to work for former juvenile delinquents. Labour...

We establish that domestically owned firms in two alternative models of emerging market economies, the Czech Republic and Russia, have not been converging to the technological frontier set by foreign owned firms. In both countries, the distance of domestic firms to the frontier grew (in all...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...