by Sander Gerritsen, Mark Kattenberg, Sonny Kuijpers
February, 2019

Given the importance of education and mental health for labor market performance, we study how these outcomes are affected by the age at which refugees arrive in the country. We identify the causal impact of age at arrival by comparing siblings who share the same family background characteristics, but arrive at different ages. We find … Continued

by Féidhlim McGowan, Pete Lunn, Deirdre Robertson
February, 2019

People underestimate long-term growth in savings because they linearise exponential growth – a phenomenon known as exponential growth bias (EGB). This bias has implications for multiple financial decisions, particularly those relating to pensions. We hypothesised that underestimation might be even more severe for regular savings relative to lump sums, because savers need also to estimate … Continued

by Paolo Fornaro, Mika Maliranta, Petri Rouvinen
February, 2019

We study immigrants’ effects on firm-level innovativeness. Managers, innovators, and other employees are considered as separate groups both in firm employment and in local areas. For each, we estimate the effects of foreignness, the share of immigrants in each group, and diversity, while controlling for an extensive set of employment and other firm characteristics. Pooled … Continued

by Laetitia Hauret, Donald R. Williams
February, 2019

Social comparison is an important issue in the context of subjective well-being. Subjective well-being, including satisfaction with pay, is not only affected by individual salary but also by the salaries of members of a reference group. This paper studies the relationship between relative wage and pay satisfaction allowing the choice of reference group to vary … Continued

by A. Aitken, P. Dolton, R. Riley
February, 2019

In 2015 the UK government announced the introduction of a new ‘National Living Wage’ (NLW) that would apply to those aged 25 and above from April 2016. At a rate of £7.20, this represented a significant increase of 7.5% over the existing National Minimum Wage (NMW) rate. Previous research has generally found, with some exceptions, … Continued

by Rita Asplund
January, 2019

This Brief first discusses why policy decision-making concerning public employment services (PES) needs to rely also on evidence-based knowledge about the effects of such measures. It also addresses what this knowledge should be based on to be considered as providing reliable guidance for the impact of various PES measures. Next our current international as well … Continued