Foreign Investors in The Netherlands: Heterogeneous Employment and Productivity Effects

Recent academic research suggests that the effects of inward foreign direct investment for productivity and employment may vary across foreign investors with different characteristics. Using a newly created dataset that integrates micro-level information from The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency and Statistics Netherlands, this paper explores the role of several of these characteristics, including e.g. the country of origin, activities and tasks, age and strategic role of foreign affiliates in The Netherlands in the 2000–2007 period. Our analysis shows that important employment and productivity differences exist for nearly all these dimensions.     

How a Reduction of Standard Working Hours Affects Employment Dynamics

December 1, 1996 a new law was implemented in Portugal to gradually reduce the standard workweek from 44 to 40 h. We study how this mandatory reduction affected employment through job creation and job destruction. There was considerable regional, sectoral and firm-size variation in the share of workers who were affected by the working hours reduction. We exploit this variation to assess the impact of the workweek reduction. We find evidence that the working hours reduction had a positive effect on employment through a fall in job destruction.     

Ideologie vor Eigennutz?

The case study regards the question whether economic self-interests of publishers have a significant influence on the reporting of their own newspapers with regard to crucial topics touching those interests. The conflict about the minimum wage in the mailing business is scrutinized. The newspapers engaged in the mailing business are compared with those of independent newspapers without these interests. Because the political inclination of a newspaper, even beyond the self-interests of its publisher, affects the reporting of a conflict, newspapers with different political views are chosen among economically involved and uninvolved media companies. The study is based on the “public task” of press and researches, using a quantifying analysis of contents, relevance and plurality of conflict reports. The results show that in this case the basic political orientation of a newspaper had a significant influence on the portrayal of the conflict. An additional influence with regard to the economic self-interests could not be proven significantly. Ideology seems to be more important than self-interest. However in this case political orientation and economic self-interests harmonized. Therefore it is still relevant to study the role of economic interests for the realization of the “public task”.