This paper shows that people skills are important determinants of labor-market outcomes, including occupational choice and wages. Technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of people skills in the workplace. We particularly focus on how the increased importance of...

We examine the impact of bilateral and multilateral tax treaties on bilateral FDI stocks. First, we present panel regressions of the effects of treaties on FDI based on an extensive database of all OECD countries from 1985 onwards. We use geographic instruments to correct for the endogeneity of...

We estimate long-run and short-run elasticities of Value Added Tax and Personal Income Tax revenues with respect to their bases for the Netherlands. We find VAT elasticities around one in the long-run and short-run. The long-run PIT elasticity is significantly below one, while the short-run...

This paper explores the welfare effects of a number of collective pension contracts, distinguishing between the two welfare effects. We find that collective schemes can be either superior or inferior to individual schemes. Collective pension contracts allow for intergenerational risk sharing...

This paper studies the effect of firm closures for prime-age and older workers. Administrative data on the Dutch labour force are used to follow a sample of Dutch workers who lost their jobs due to firm closures in the period 2000 - 2009. Applying difference-in-difference techniques and using a...

The particular situation of the youngest and oldest individuals on the labour market motivates age-specific labour market analysis. One topical case is employment protection for older workers. The effect of employment protection on the total number of jobs is ambiguous. The positive effect of...

This research applies a task-based approach to measure and interpret changes in the employment structure of the 168 largest US cities in the period 1990-2009. As a result of technological change some tasks can be placed at distance, while others require proximity. We construct a measure of...

Reduced credit supply in the years 2008 and 2009 should have resulted in lower growth in industries that are more dependent on external finance. This effect should have been stronger in countries with a more prominent and/or more leveraged financial system. We focus on the OECD countries and,...

This paper discusses policy instruments for redirecting technical change within the electricity sector to mitigate climate change. First, we unravel the mechanism behind directed technical change, explaining why markets may underprovide innovations in expensive renewable technologies in...

This paper develops a theory of asset pricing in which discount rates for investments in all assets, including adaptation and mitigation, are endogenously determined. Exploiting the characteristics of adaptation and mitigation in terms of climatic risk, I show that adaptation requires a lower...