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Abstract: We study student loan behavior in the Netherlands where i) higher education students know little about the conditions of the government's financial aid program and ii) take-up rates are low. In a field experiment we manipulated the amount of information students have about these conditions. The treatment has no impact on loan take-up, which is not due to students already having decided to take a loan or students not absorbing the information. We conclude that a lack of knowledge about specific policy parameters does not necessarily imply a binding information constraint. Download this paper.
Abstract: A vast body of empirical studies lends support to the incentive effects of rank-order tournaments. Evidence comes from experiments in laboratories and non-experimental studies exploiting sports or firm data. Selection of competitors across tournaments may bias these non-experimental studies, whereas short task duration or lack of distracters may limit the external validity of results obtained in lab experiments or from sports data. To address these concerns we conducted a field experiment where students selected themselves into tournaments with different prizes. Within each tournament the best performing student on the final exam of a standard introductory microeconomics course could win a substantial financial reward. A standard non-experimental analysis exploiting across tournament variation in reward size and competitiveness confirms earlier findings. We find however no evidence for effects of tournament participation on study effort and exam results when we exploit our experimental design, indicating that the non-experimental results are completely due to sorting. Treatment only affects attendance of the first workgroup meeting following the announcement of treatment status, suggesting a difference between short-run and long-run decision making. Download this paper.
Abstract: This paper estimates the effects of attending medical school on health behavior and health status exploiting that admission to medical school in the Netherlands is determined by a lottery. Because lottery losers are permitted to re-apply, we use the result of the first lottery in which someone participates as instrumental variable. Our results show that health education reduces alcohol intake and being underweight, and seems to reduce smoking. It has, however, no impact on being overweight or obese, or on subjective health status. The effect on the frequency of physical exercise is even negative. This mixed evidence makes it unlikely that the content of education programs explains the education gradient for health. Health education has a large impact on the probability of being registered for donations of organs, suggesting that information provision is a possible channel to raise the supply of organs. Download this paper.
Abstract: To stimulate investment in training by individuals, the Dutch tax system allows a deduction of direct training expenditures from taxable income. This paper investigates to what extent the resulting cost reduction encourages training investments. Two different identification strategies are used. The first strategy uses the progressive structure of the income tax scheme and compares groups with taxable income just above or just below kinks. The second strategy takes advantage of the 2001 tax reform, which implied substantial changes in marginal tax rates. These strategies exploit different sources of exogenous variation and are based on different identifying assumptions. Nevertheless, the results point in the same direction: tax incentives increase training participation. Download this paper.
Abstract: This paper investigates how a policy that is aimed to increase the labor force attachment of older teachers affects their labor supply and absenteeism. The policy allows teachers older than 52 to reduce their working hours by 10% at the cost of a 3.5% salary reduction. When teachers turn 56 they can reduce their work load by another 10% at the same cost. This measure therefore introduces a change in teachers budget constraints the moment they turn 52 respectively 56. This paper uses cross-sectional and longitudinal variation to assess the effect of this policy on teachers labor supply and the subsequent effect on absenteeism. Download this paper.