The use of anchoring vignettes to correct for differential item functioning rests upon two identifying assumptions: vignette equivalence and response consistency. To test the second assumption the authors conduct an experiment in which respondents in an Internet panel are asked to both describe...

Targeting based on individuals or households needs instead of applying universal programs helps distribute scarce resources to those who need it most, avoiding “leakage” of the poverty budget to non-poor households. In this paper, the authors explore the use of different household and...

The RAND Continuous 2012 Presidential Election Poll (CPEP) is conducted within the American Life Panel, which is an internet panel recruited through traditional probability sampling to ensure representativeness. The CPEP differs from other polls in that it asks the same respondents repeatedly...

Worksharing is considered by many as a promising public policy to reduce unemployment. In this paper we present a review of the most pertinent theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on worksharing. In addition, we also provide new empirical evidence on this issue, by a cross...

In the past few decades, financial products target to consumers have become increasingly complex and recent evidence suggests that older adults are entering retirement with more debt than previous generations. We examine how cognitive ability is related to debt burdens among older adults and...

This chapter discusses latent variable models in econometrics. The essential characteristic of a latent variable is revealed by the fact that the system of linear structural equations in which it appears cannot be manipulated so as to express the variable as a function of measured variables...

We conducted a field study in the city of Yangon, Myanmar to investigate major obstacles to business development in the region. The analysis focuses on three aspects of the business environment that are considered to be top constraints among Myanmar small and medium enterprises (SMEs): (1)...

Social networks and social interactions affect individual and social norms. We develop a direct test of this using Dutch survey data on how respondents evaluate work disability of hypothetical people with some work related health problem (vignettes). We analyze how the thresholds respondents use...

Recent economic research on international comparisons of subjective well-being suffers from several important biases due to the potential incomparability of response scales within and across countries. In this paper we concentrate on self-reported satisfaction with income in two countries: The...

This paper presents information on labor market participation of the elderly, mortality and health, pathways to retirement and rates of participation in various earnings replacing programs in the Netherlands. It presents an overview of reforms to Disability Insurance (DI) and other income...