Categorie: MAG
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The 30%-rule for expats: impact on immigration and wages
Immigrants that relocate to the Netherlands with the purpose of starting employment that requires skills that are scarce in the Dutch labor force, benefit from a substantial reduction in income taxation. Such tax benefits have existed since the 50’s in the Netherlands, though the details have continuously changed. Currently, the rule implies that 30% of…
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Does the lack of collateral prevent the creation and growth of small businesses?
Small businesses are crucial to the economy: in the Netherlands, they provide over the third of value added and the half of employment. Yet, small firms often face difficulties obtaining bank loans, according to a leading explanation because they do not have sufficient collateral value. The policy implications of this explanation are large as many…
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Breaking the barrier? The effects of the National Program Rotterdam South on educational mobility
Educational mobility in the Netherlands has generally increased in the post-WWII period, but advancing equality of educational opportunity in poor urban areas remains a serious challenge. The National Program Rotterdam South is a major social policy program that aims to improve educational performances in this urban area. However, systematic research on whether children from disadvantaged…
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Do neighbourhoods affect health? Disentangling selection and causation
Population health differs dramatically across neighbourhoods. Contextual determinants of health such as neighbourhood effects have become a focal point of research. However, the scientific community is still actively debating whether neighbourhood effects are causal (i.e. living in a certain neighbourhood causally affects one’s health) or merely the result of selection effects (i.e. healthier people moving…
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Determinants of Civic versus Economic Outcomes of Dutch Secondary Education
Education fulfils a vital role in preparing generations for the future. This involves an economic and a civic task: to provide youngsters labour market qualification, and to prepare them for participation in society and democracy. Determinants of school effectiveness for fulfilment of the economic task have been extensively studied, and this is also increasingly the…
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The effect of mergers on market power: large scale evidence from the Netherlands
Of the money earned by companies, an increasing proportion is going to the owners by way of profits, and a decreasing proportion is paid out to both the owners of capital and the workers (Barkai, 2017). The redistribution that accompanies such an increase in market power has been directly linked to increasing inequality and its…
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Utilizing a natural experiment to investigate the effect of educational failure on mental health
Educational failure, such as grade retention, drop-down or drop-out, has been associated with poor mental health in children and adults. This association could be due to a causal effect of educational failure, but it is also likely to result, at least in part, from the presence of confounding factors affecting both education and health, such…
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Gene-environment interplay in education: the impact of school quality and tracking
Dutch children with similar IQ are twice as likely to attain higher education when their parents are highly educated compared to when parents are lower educated. The magnitude of such unequal opportunities is thought to depend on characteristics of the school environment, such as school quality and the way children are tracked into different educational…
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Suicidal acts in the Dutch context
Scientific interest in suicidal acts (attempted and completed suicides) spans a wide range of disciplines from epidemiology, through economics, psychology, and unquestionably – sociology. Though theoretically well-informed, one of the leading challenges in the study of suicidal acts has unquestionably been methodological, namely, the availability of high-quality, individual-level data. The goal of this project is…