Better Protected, Better Paid: Evidence on How Employment Protection Affects Wages

This paper empirically establishes the effect of the employer's term of notice on the wage level of employees. The term of notice is defined as the period an employer has to notify workers in advance of their upcoming dismissal. The wages paid during this period are an important element of firing costs and hence employment protection. To find a causal effect, I exploit the exogenous change in the term of notice that resulted from the introduction of a new Dutch law in 1999. Strong evidence is found that a longer 'dormant' term of notice leads to higher wages. In my sample, an additional month of notice increases wages by three percent, ceteris paribus.employment protection, term of notice, wages

Preparing for Policy Changes: Social Security Expectations and Pension Scheme Participation

Western governments are currently contemplating how to adapt their Pay-As-You-Go pension systems so that these remain financially sustainable, even with an aged population. To the extent that policy-makers haven't already adapted their old age social security schemes, an ageing population thus leads to policy uncertainty in first pillar pensions. This paper sheds more light on the relationship between public and private savings by analyzing private pension scheme participation in the presence of such policy uncertainty. To do so, I assess the influence of subjective policy change expectations on voluntary pension scheme participation in the Netherlands. I find that participation in private pension schemes is higher for those who assign a high probability to the dismantlement of old age social security – in terms of lower benefits levels but more so in terms of a higher eligibility age. In addition, subjectively short-lived individuals who believe an eligibility age increase to be more likely than a benefit level cut, participate more. This could be explained by the fact that the relative cost of an eligibility age increase is larger for those who expect to live shorter. Individuals hence do prepare themselves for anticipated policy changes in old age social security and policy uncertainty in social security thus seems to lead to an increase in, or crowding in of, private savings.ageing, savings behavior, social security, subjective probabilities, uncertainty

Better Protected, Better Paid: Evidence on How Employment Protection Affects Wages

This paper empirically establishes the effect of the employer's term of notice on the wage level of employees. The term of notice is defined as the period an employer has to notify workers in advance of their up-coming dismissal. The wages paid during this period are an important element of firing costs and hence employment protection. To find a causal effect, I exploit the exogenous change in the term of notice that resulted from the introduction of a new Dutch law in 1999. Strong evidence is found that a longer ‘dormant’ term of notice leads to higher wages. In my sample, an additional month of notice increases wages by three percent, ceteris paribus.employment protection, wages, fixed effects

Cross your border and look around

This document focuses on innovation, human capital, technology transfers and competition as potential sources of productivity growth for firms. It integrates the views of existing literature such as the two faces of R&D, the convergence debate and the existence of firm-level heterogeneity in productivity. Using firm-level data of 127 industries in the Netherlands, the document analyses which determinants are most relevant for a catch up to the global frontier and in that respect are important for the productivity performance of firms. Moreover, the document takes into account the potential importance of a national frontier. The frontier is defined as the highest productivity level at the national or global level respectively. The document provides econometric evidence that technology transfers matter, predominantly from the national frontier. Particularly, R&D encourages growth through technology transfers from the national frontier. This suggests that firms mainly conduct R&D in order to adopt existing technologies from other (domestic) firms. Competition on Dutch markets plays a role in productivity growth as well. Finally, human capital also seems to affect productivity growth.

School Responsiveness to Quality Rankings: An Empirical Analysis of Secondary Education in the Netherlands

This paper analyzes the response of secondary schools to changes in their quality ratings. The current analysis is the first to address the impact of quality scores that have been published by a newspaper (Trouw), rather than public interventions. Our research design exploits the substantial lags in the registration and publication of the Trouw scores and that takes into account all possible outcomes of the ratings, instead of the lowest category only. Overall, we find evidence that school quality performance does respond to Trouw quality scores. Both average grades increase and the number of diplomas go up after receiving a negative score. For schools that receive the most negative ranking, the short-term effects (one year after a change in the ranking of schools) of quality transparency on final exam grades equal 10% to 30% of a standard deviation compared to the average of this variable. The estimated long run impacts are roughly equal to the short-term effects that are measured.school quality, school accountability

Ranking the Schools: How Quality Information Affects School Choice in the Netherlands

This paper analyzes whether information on high school quality published by a national newspaper affects school choice in the Netherlands. For this purpose, we use both school level and individual student level data. First, we study the causal effect of quality scores on the influx of new high school students using a longitudinal school dataset. We find that negative (positive) school quality scores decrease (increase) the number of students choosing a school after the year of publication. The positive effects are particularly large for the academic school track. An academic school track receiving the most positive score sees its inflow of students rise by 15 to 20 students. Second, we study individual school choice behaviour to address the relative importance of the quality scores, as well as potential differences in the quality response between socio-economic groups. Although the probability of attending a school is affected by its quality score, it is mainly driven by the travelling distance. Students are only willing to travel about 200 meters more in order to attend a well-performing rather than an average school. In contrast to equity concerns that are often raised, we cannot find differences in information responses between socio-economic groups.school quality, school choice, information, media

Competition and Innovation: Pushing Productivity Up or Down?

This paper examines the relationship between competition, innovation and productivity for the Netherlands. We use industry level data aggregated from micro data as well as moments from firm level data for the period 1996-2006. We match innovation data from Community Innovation Survey with accounting data to link innovative activities with performance at the industry level. We find strong evidence for a positive impact of competition on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) at the industry level. Competition directly increases TFP by reducing X-ineficiencies and removing inefficient forms from markets, but also through more innovation. Nonetheless, there exists an inverted U- curve between competition and innovation for the Netherlands, at least for manufacturing industries. Yet, our results indicate that a negative effect of competition on productivity through lower innovation expenditures arises only at very high levels of competition.competition;innovation;profit elasticity;productivity

Ranking the schools: How quality information affects school choice in the Netherlands

Both school level and individual student level data indicate that information on highschool quality published by a national newspaper affects school choice in the Netherlands. The positive effects are particularly large for the academic school track. First, we study the causal effect of quality scores on the influx of new highschool students using a longitudinal school dataset. We find that negative (positive) school quality scores decrease (increase) the number of students choosing a school after the year of publication. An academic school track receiving the most positive score sees its inflow of students rise by 15 to 20 students. Second, we study individual school choice behavior to address the relative importance of the quality scores, as well as potential differences in the quality response between socio-economic groups. Although the probability of attending a school is affected by its quality score, it is mainly driven by the traveling distance. Students are willing to travel only about 200 meters more to attend a well-performing rather than an average school. In contrast to equity concerns that are often raised, we cannot find differences in information responses between socio-economic groups.

Brain regions involved in observing and trying to interpret dog behaviour

Humans and dogs have interacted for millennia. As a result, humans (and especially dog owners) sometimes try to interpret dog behaviour. While there is extensive research on the brain regions that are involved in mentalizing about other peoples' behaviour, surprisingly little is known of whether we use these same brain regions to mentalize about animal behaviour. In this fMRI study we investigate whether brain regions involved in mentalizing about human behaviour are also engaged when observing dog behaviour. Here we show that these brain regions are more engaged when observing dog behaviour that is difficult to interpret compared to dog behaviour that is easy to interpret. Interestingly, these results were not only obtained when participants were instructed to infer reasons for the behaviour but also when they passively viewed the behaviour, indicating that these brain regions are activated by spontaneous mentalizing processes

Coherent single electron spin control in a slanting Zeeman field

We consider a single electron in a 1D quantum dot with a static slanting Zeeman field. By combining the spin and orbital degrees of freedom of the electron, an effective quantum two-level (qubit) system is defined. This pseudo-spin can be coherently manipulated by the voltage applied to the gate electrodes, without the need for an external time-dependent magnetic field or spin-orbit coupling. Single qubit rotations and the C-NOT operation can be realized. We estimated relaxation ($T_1$) and coherence ($T_{2}$) times, and the (tunable) quality factor. This scheme implies important experimental advantages for single electron spin control.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure