We extend the bunching approach introduced by Saez (Am Econ J Econ Policy 2:180-212, 2010) by proposing an intuitive, data-driven procedure to determine the bunching window. By choosing the bunching window ad hoc, researchers throw away informative data points for estimating the counterfactual income distribution in the absence of the kink. Assuming a descending bunching mass to both sides of the threshold, the proposed algorithm produces a distribution of lower and upper bounds for the bunching window. In each iteration, the bunching window is defined as all contiguous bin midpoints around the threshold that lie outside of the confidence band resulting from running a local regression through all data points outside of the excluded region. Monte Carlo simulations provide evidence that our data-driven procedure outperforms larger bunching windows in terms of bias and efficiency. In our application for the Netherlands, we find clear evidence of bunching behaviour at all three thresholds of the Dutch tax schedule with a precisely estimated elasticity of 0.023 at the upper threshold, which is driven by self-employed, women and joint tax filers.

Job satisfaction helps create a committed workforce with many positive effects, such as increased organisational citizenship behaviour and reduced absenteeism. In turn, job satisfaction can be increased through gratifications, such as wage increases and promotions. But human satisfaction is prone to being governed by the homeostatic principle and will eventually return to the individual's base level. Thus, we longitudinally examined the effects of promotions to managerial positions and pay raises on job satisfaction across a period of 27 years. Our analyses were based on a large-scale representative German panel (N = 5978 observations) that allowed us to separate the effect of a promotion from the effect of the corresponding wage increase. We found that promotions positively affected job satisfaction in the short term but diminished after 1 year. Furthermore, the influence of a promotion on job satisfaction was more pronounced for men than for women.

In this article, we compare three data-driven procedures to determine the bunching window in a Monte Carlo simulation of taxable income. Following the standard approach in the empirical bunching literature, we fit a flexible polynomial model to a simulated income distribution, excluding data in a range around a prespecified kink. First, we propose to implement methods for the estimation of structural breaks to determine a bunching regime around the kink. A second procedure is based on Cook’s distances aiming to identify outlier observations. Finally, we apply the iterative counterfactual procedure proposed by Bosch, Dekker, and Strohmaier which evaluates polynomial counterfactual models for all possible bunching windows. While our simulation results show that all three procedures are fairly accurate, the iterative counterfactual procedure is the preferred method to detect the bunching window when no prior information about the true size of the bunching window is available.

No abstract

Six and a half years after Holland's worst ever air disaster, a Dutch parliamentary commission of inquiry has severely criticised the government's response, admitting for the first time the link between the crash and a number of unexplained illnesses BIJLMER, AMSTERDAM: 4 OCTOBER 1992, 6:35PM Henk Prijt: 'We were in the living room, watching the sports programme on television, like so many others in our neighbourhood did that Sunday evening. It was a few minutes after sunset when I noticed an airplane flying low. Low-flying airliners are nothing special here since we live near Schiphol and the route over our heads is one of the busiest for Amsterdam airport. But this particular plane did something strange: it flew in the wrong direction. I didn't pay much attention and it flew out of my sight. Shortly after, however, there it was again, coming right at us as we stared out of the window. My son yelled and dashed for the back 8 of the house. As he looked out the door he saw something no one "g should ever have to see: the huge plane plunging into the next block, Jŝ ome 250 metres to the east of our building.' Q