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This paper provides a systematic review of the growing literature on the poor match between employees’ field degree and the job requirements, also referred to as horizontal mismatch. From a human capital model perspective, horizontal mismatch is an undesirable phenomenon in the case that it results in an underutilization of the knowledge and skills acquired through formal education. We identify the different definitions used in the literature and find that each measure of horizontal mismatch yields substantially different incidence rates. We discuss the validity of the different measures and conclude that a more uniform definition of horizontal mismatch is needed. The likelihood of horizontal mismatch is among other things determined by the extent to which employees possess general skills as opposed to occupation-specific skills, and, it appears to be more frequently present among older workers. Compared to well-matched employees, horizontally mismatched workers generally incur a wage penalty, are less satisfied with their jobs, and are more likely to regret their study programme. The ensuing findings offer guidance to prevent horizontal mismatch as well as a roadmap for future research. ispartof: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS vol:33 issue:2 pages:567-603 status: published

This study examines if couples time their work hours and how this work timing influences child care demand and the time that spouses jointly spend on leisure, household chores and child care. By using a innovative matching strategy, this studies identifies the timing of work hours that cannot be explained by factors other than the partners' potential to communicate on the timing of their work. The main findings are that couples with children create less overlap in their work times and this effect is more pronounced the younger the children. We find evidence for a togetherness preference of spouses, but only for childless couples. Work timing also influences the joint time that is spent on household chores, but the effect is small. Finally, work timing behavior affects the demand for informal child care, but not the demand for formal child care.

We estimate a collective time allocation model, where Dutch, Surinamese/Antillean and Turkish households behave as if both spouses maximize a household utility function. We assume that paid labor and housework are the endogenous choice variables and furthermore consider household production. Surinamese/Antillean and Turkish women differ from Dutch women because they value (joint) household production more in their utility function. Surinamese/Antillean and Turkish men, on the other hand, value joint household production less then Dutch men. Turkish households are the more traditional households, in the sense that the woman is more oriented on household production, while the man is oriented on paid labor. It is often believed that the bargaining power of women in more traditional households is relatively low, but our estimation results do not support this idea. In general, the wage elasticities of Dutch, Turkish and Surinamese/Antillean households are comparable. Men and women replace housework hours by paid labor if their hourly wage rate increases but do the opposite when the hourly wage rate of the partner increases.

In this paper we consider an empirical collective household model of time allocation for twoearnerhouseholds. The novelty of this paper is that we estimate a version of the collectivehousehold model, where the internally produced goods and the externally purchased goodsare assumed to be public. The empirical results suggest that: (1) Preferences of men andwomen differ; (2) Although there are significant individual variations, on average the utilityfunctions of men and women are equally weighted in the household utility function; (3)Differences in the ratio of the partners' hourly wages are explanatory for how individualutilities are weighted in the household utility function. (4) The female's preference forhousehold production is influenced by family size, but this does not hold for the male; (5)Both the male and the female have a backward-bending labor supply curve; (6) Labor-supplycurves are forward-bending with respect to the partner's wage rate; (7) Our model rejects theunitary Slutsky symmetry condition.This discussion paper has resulted in a publication in the href=http://www.springerlink.com/content/91m8442036767052/>'Review of Economics of the Household', 2008, 6(2), 169-91.

There is a small but growing literature on the determinants of social capital. Most of these studies use a measure of trust to define social capital empirically. In this paper we use three different measures of social capital: the size of the individual's social network, the extent of their social safety net and membership of unions or associations. A second contribution to the literature is that we analyze what social capital contributes to our well-being. Based on this, we calculate the compensating income variation of social capital. We find differences in social capital when we differentiate according to individual characteristics such as education, age, place of residence, household composition, and health. Household income generally has a statistically significant effect. We find a significant effect of social capital on life satisfaction. Consequently, the compensating income variation of social capital is substantial.

Although the number of immigrant households in the Netherlands is substantial, the labor supply choices of this group are usually neglected in empirical studies because these households are usually under-sampled. We use a stratified sample of Turkish, Surinamese/Antillean and Dutch households that enables us to discuss how two-earner households allocate their time to different activities. In order to do so, we empirically estimate a collective household labor supply model. The main findings are that: (1) Leisure and household income are the most important variables in the utility function of the male; (2) Leisure, total household production and total household production interacted with family size are important variables in the utility function of the female. The latter two are especially important for Turkish and Surinamese/Antillean females; (3) The utility of Turkish and Dutch males weighs slightly more than the utility of the partner in the household utility function. For Surinamese/Antillean families we find the opposite; (4) Utility weighting depends on the presence of children and on the hourly wage rates of both partners; (5) The labor supply curve is forward bending for both male and female in terms of their own wage. The labor supply curve is backward bending for both male and female in terms of the partner's wage. We find this for all household types; (6) The presence of (more) children reduces the hours of labor supplied by women and increases the number of hours supplied by men.

In this paper an empirical model is developed where the collective household model is used as a basic framework to describe the time allocation problem. The collective model views household behavior as the outcome of maximizing a household utility function which is a weighted sum of the utility functions of the male and the female. The empirical research that has been done is mainly focused on testing and refuting the unitary model. Moreover, in the bulk of time allocation literature the main accent still lies on the development of theory. The novelty of this paper is that we empirically estimate the two individual utility functions and the household power weight distribution, which is parameterized per household. The model is estimated on a sub-sample of the British Household Panel Survey, consisting of two-earner households. The empirical results suggest that: (1) Given that the weight distribution is wage dependent, preferences of males and females differ, which rejects the unitary model; (2) The power differences are mainly explained by differences in the ratio of the partners' hourly wages; (3) Although there are significant individual variations on average the power distribution in two-earner families is about even; (4) The male tends to be marginally more productive in performing household tasks than the female (5) The preference for total household production is influenced by family size for the female but not for the male (6) Both males and females have a backward bending labor supply curve.

This paper introduces a new method to calculate the extent to which individuals are willing to trade money for improvements in their health status. An individual welfare function of income (WFI) is applied to calculate the compensating income variation of health impairments. We believe that this approach avoids various drawbacks of alternative willingness-to-pay methods. The WFI is used to calculate the compensating variation of cardiovascular diseases. It is found that for a 25-year old male the compensating variation of a heart disease ranges from 160,000 Euro to 430,000 Euro depending on the welfare level. This is about 8,000 to 32,000 Euro for an additional life year, depending on the quality of life. The compensating variation declines with age and is lower for women than for men. The estimates further vary by the discount rate chosen. The estimates of the compensating variation are generally higher than the money spent on heart related medical interventions per QALY.

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020.

Human capital theory is based on the idea that workers possess a combination of skills that can be made productive in the labor market. According to human capital theory, differences in the levels of human capital in the workforce explain differences in wages and employment rates. Involuntary unemployment occurs when the supply of human capital in the workforce is not tailored to the corresponding demand by employers. This problem arises when the demand for human capital has changed, for instance, due to technological advancements. This mechanism is especially relevant in the field of information technology (IT), where new technologies are introduced rapidly, shifting the demand for skills in the IT sector.As a general policy instrument to combat involuntary unemployment, governments around the world invest in different kinds of labor market programs that are categorized under the umbrella term of active labor market policy (ALMP). The goal of these programs is to improve the labor market outcomes of the participants, including employment rates and earnings. The motivation behind ALMP is to achieve this goal through human capital formation. After participating in the ALMP, the human capital of the participants should be more tailored to demand than before participating. Human capital theory predicts that when ALMP improves the human capital of the participants, this in turn leads to improved labor market outcomes, such as employment rates and earnings.In undertaking an analysis of human capital theory and labor market policy, this PhD thesis has four objectives. The first is to determine what makes ALMP effective. The second objective is to identify the skills and abilities that employers seek when recruiting new IT personnel for retraining. The third objective involves estimating the determinants of enrollment, study success and dropout in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in higher education. The final aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific IT retraining program in the Netherlands, which is an ALMP set up in co-operation between the public and private sectors and is specifically aimed at highly educated workers.