Income Support Policies for Part-Time Workers: A Stepping-Stone to Regular Jobs? An Application to Young Long-Term Unemployed Women in Belgium We verify whether an income support policy for part-time workers in Belgium increases the transition from unemployment to non-subsidised, “regular” employment. Using a sample of 8630 long-term unemployed young women, whose labour market history is observ...

We estimate the effect of initial episodes under fixed-term contracts (FTCs) on job duration in the further course of the employment spell, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from 1985 to 2002. Using a statistical matching approach, we find that job exit rates are initially much higher if the employment spell began with an FTC. However, exit rates fall below those of compara...

We study how a reduction of the potential duration of unemployment benefit receipt (PBD) affects medium-run earnings and employment of job seekers. The analysis is based on a Swiss reform that reduced PBD from 24 months to 18 months for job seekers younger than 55 years in 2003. Adopting a difference-indifference framework, we find that this reduction in PBD increases employment and earnings of...

Scarring Effects of Remaining Unemployed for Long-Term Unemployed School-Leavers This study investigates whether and to what extent further unemployment experience for youths who are already long-term unemployed imposes a penalty on subsequent labor market outcomes. We propose a flexible method for analyzing the effect on wages aside of transitions from unemployment and employment within a mult...

In this paper, we use high-frequency data on five frequently traded stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the year 1999 to examine the price impact of trades and its relation to the trading intensity. We show that the distribution of the absolute price change with fast trading firstorder stochastically dominates the distribution of the absolute price change with slow trading. M...

A Simple GMM Estimator for the Semi-Parametric Mixed Proportional Hazard Model Ridder and Woutersen (2003) have shown that under a weak condition on the baseline hazard there exist root-N consistent estimators of the parameters in a semiparametric Mixed Proportional Hazard model with a parametric baseline hazard and unspecified distribution of the unobserved heterogeneity. We extend the Linear ...

In this paper we study how corporate bond defaults can be predicted using financial ratios and how the forecasted probability of default relates to the cross-section of expected stock returns. Using several performance measures we find that the duration model outperforms existing models in correctly classifying both Default and Non-Default firms. Using the default probabilities predicted by our...

In accordance with the needs and preferences of both employers and employees, labor markets in Western countries became increasingly flexible. However, for workers such flexibility bears the risk of long-term exclusion. This paper deals with unequal exclusionary risks on contemporary labor markets, particularly for those who are inactive and have unfavorable endowments. The data used to reveal ...

Innovation and the Determinants of Firm Survival * While many firms compete through the development of new technologies and products, it is well known that new-to-the-world innovation is inherently risky and therefore may increase the probability of firm death. However, many existing studies consistently find a negative association between innovative activity and firm death. We argue that this ...

Instrumental Variable Estimation of Treatment Effects for Duration Outcomes In this article we propose and implement an instrumental variable estimation procedure to obtain treatment effects on duration outcomes. The method can handle the typical complications that arise with duration data of time-varying treatment and censoring. The treatment effect we define is in terms of shifting the quanti...