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.     

Promotion Mechanisms on the PGA TOUR

The dynamics of screening talent and promoting an athlete to a major team sports league is not entirely different from that of a major individual sports league. While talent is assessed through mechanisms offering more or less observations, coaching decisions and team quality that can affect performance in team sports are generally not present in individual sports. Avoiding the possible distortions that can come from assessing athletic talent in team sports, this article examines the ability of two PGA TOUR promotion mechanisms—the Nationwide Tour and Qualifying School (Q‐school)—to predict success. As expected, the results suggest that more observations from the Nationwide Tour assessment mechanism provide more information about talent that can be used to better predict success on the PGA TOUR. But place of finish also matters, so promotion through the Nationwide Tour alone is not sufficient for a player to have the greatest chance for success.