The paper investigates whether the Dutch Act on debt restructuring natural persons (WSNP) has an effect on the labour market outcomes of severely indebted persons. When participating in the programme, the indebted persons must be prepared to perform paid work activities, even though the income they may earn is below the social assistance benefit. If they fail the criteria of the programme, the debtors face bankruptcy. If they are successful, personal debts will be forgiven after a maximum of five years of wage garnishments. Our estimates indicate strong labour market effects of the debtors after applying for the WSNP.

This paper contributes to the recent literature on the economic growth implications of automation and artificial intelligence (AI), by devising and exploring the dynamics of an analytical model featuring the gradual substitution of labor by automated processes. In the proposed setting, a symbiotic relation between the expansion of AI and the accumulation of human capital stands out as the driver of long-term sustained growth. Two versions of the model are scrutinized. In the first version, the representative capitalist is an optimal planner, while workers (who are heterogeneous regarding their productivity levels) are hand-to-mouth consumers. In the second version, every agent formulates an intertemporal plan and may, simultaneously, be a worker and an investor. This difference in context is vital for identifying the potential beneficiaries of the implementation of labor-saving technologies.

This paper examines serial and both local and global cross-sectional dependence of regional unemployment rates in the Netherlands from 1950 to 2021, using a common factor spatial panel data model. A structural break test applied to this model provides significant empirical evidence that after the period 1980–1984 the half-life of an unemployment shock decreased, Dutch provinces became more locally integrated, regional unemployment rates moved more in line with the national unemployment rate and regional disparities in unemployment decreased. This break is attributed to wage restraint and work sharing laid down in the Wassenaar Agreement. This break and the further development of regional unemployment rates since then are set in the context of a number of important developments, including the government’s austerity policy changes and social security reforms, changes in unemployment measurement methods, the transition of employment from agriculture and industry to the service sector and the increased spatial flexibility of the labor force due to the reduction of travel times.

Gender gaps are widespread. The world of payments is no exception as our research using novel survey data from Dutch households, collected from 24 November to 31 December 2023, demonstrates. Specifically, we study the division of payment tasks within households and the associated factors. Men are more involved in paying housing-related costs, whereas women tend to be in charge of grocery payments. Differences in experience with digital payment methods, self-assessed fraud knowledge, and digital and financial literacy lie at the heart of these payment tasks gender gaps. This division of tasks in turn explains the greater financial decision-making power of men within households. To differentiate between gender and task specialization effects we show that payment tasks are divided more equally in same-sex households than in opposite-sex households. Our research underscores the importance of policies aimed at improving fraud knowledge, digital literacy, and financial literacy, especially among women. Additionally, people can be made more aware of the impact of traditional gender roles.

Both the healthcare and education sector suffer from considerable staff shortages. In the healthcare sector, shortages are particularly prominent for nurses, while the education sector experiences significant teacher shortages. In this systematic literature review, we examine the effectiveness of interventions and policies to reduce staff shortages in healthcare and education in high-income countries. We focus our analysis on studies that apply research designs that allow for causal inference to inform policymakers about the effectiveness of interventions. In total, we include 85 studies that meet our inclusion criteria. Out of these studies, 71 studies focus on teachers and 14 on nurses, and 72 of the retrieved studies were conducted in the US. The majority of studies examine the impact of financial incentives and a large share of these studies report positive effects on teacher employment. Moreover, different types of interventions that invest in workers’ human capital show predominantly positive effects on employment. Interventions that equip nurses with skills to better cope with the stressors of their profession seem to be particularly effective. The same holds for policies that increase the scope of practice for nurses. Finally, effective school leaders are better capable of retaining (high-quality) teachers.

Research on Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8) promotes sustained economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work. This paper presents a complementary approach to standard systematic literature reviews and monitors the intended ex-ante research efforts on SDG 8. We introduce a large-scale research project analysis framework to trace and track the prevalence of SDGs within research funded by the European Union (EU) since 1984, underscoring the EU's significant role in promoting research on sustainable development. Using the publicly available CORDIS database, we identify the extent to which SDG 8 related targets have been represented in the titles and abstracts of projects funded by the EU's Framework Programmes. Our findings reveal that SDG 8-related research projects are dominated by four targets: economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship and decent work, and full and decent employment.