Disability Insurance (DI) may affect workers’ outcomes such as their probability to enter DI, to recover, and their employment. Supplementary insurance may increase these moral hazard effects, but... Show moreDisability Insurance (DI) may affect workers’ outcomes such as their probability to enter DI, to recover, and their employment. Supplementary insurance may increase these moral hazard effects, but also increases the financial gains of private insurers to reduce benefit costs. With increased insurer activities to prevent and reintegrate workers, the overall effects of increased insurance coverage on workers’ outcomes are thus ambiguous. This paper aims to separate worker and insurer responses to increased insurance, using unique administrative data on firms’ supplementary DI insurance contracts. Using a Two-Way FixedEffects model on the sickness and employment rates of worker cohorts with and without supplementary contracts at some point in time, we find that insurer efforts compensate workers’ moral hazard effects. Show less
People typically set goals in settings where they cannot be sure of how they will perform, but where their performance is revealed to them in parts over time. When part of the uncertainty is... Show morePeople typically set goals in settings where they cannot be sure of how they will perform, but where their performance is revealed to them in parts over time. When part of the uncertainty is resolved, initial goals may have turned out to be unrealistic and hence they no longer work as a motivation device. Revising goals may increase performance by making goals realistic, but may also adversely affect performance through reduced goal commitment. We study the effects of motivating university students to set goals and inviting them to revise their goals later, using a field experiment involving nearly 2,100 students. We use courses containing two midterms and a final exam, where midterms reduce uncertainty about students’ potential performance. We find that motivating students to set goals does not affect performance on average. Students with midterm grades lower than their goal, decrease their performance. This effect is driven by students who were motivated to set goals without being made aware that they can revise their goals later. This finding may help explain why the evidence of the effectiveness of goals on study performance is mixed. Show less
Blom, M.; Dur, R.; Fleming, D.; Garderen, M. van; Lent, M. van 2018
We develop a model where people differ in their altruistic preferences and can serve the public interest in two ways: by making donations to charity and by taking a public service job and exerting... Show moreWe develop a model where people differ in their altruistic preferences and can serve the public interest in two ways: by making donations to charity and by taking a public service job and exerting effort on the job. Our theory predicts that people who are more altruistic are more likely to take a public service job and, for a given job, make higher donations to charity. Comparing equally altruistic workers, those with a regular job make higher donations to charity than those with a public service job by a simple substitution argument. We subsequently test these predictions using cross-sectional data from Germany on self-reported altruism, sector of employment, and donations to charity. In addition, we use panel data from the Netherlands on volunteering and sector of employment. We find support for most of our predictions. Show less
