---

This book consists of four essays on the fields of labour and health economics. All of them are concerned with the effects of behavioural and psychological factors. The first essay examines the effects of non-cognitive skills on tests scores; the second examines the effects of retirement on health outcomes; the third examines the effects of similarity between an unemployed person and his caseworker on employment outcomes; the fourth examines the effects of a caseworker´s attitude towards cooperation with his client on employment outcomes. The latter two are joint work with Markus Frölich and Michael Lechner.

---

Stefanie Behncke is economist at the Swiss National Bank. She obtained her PhD in 2009 from the University of St. Gallen. She studied economics at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Essex and was a visiting scholar at the University of York.

---