Publications


March 29, 2022

Labor Supply Effects of Survivor Insurance: Evidence from Restricted Access to Survivor Benefits in the Netherlands

The ANW reform of 1996 in the Netherlands reduced the eligibility to survivor benefits for cohorts born after 1950. We find an increase in personal income (+23%) and labor force participation (+16%) for the widowers...

March 25, 2022

Inequality and Redistribution in the Netherlands

How high is income inequality in the Netherlands? How progressive are taxes and how much income does government spending redistribute? This study presents the most exhaustive responses for the Netherlands to these...

March 17, 2022

Addressing Unemployment Rate Forecast Errors in Relation to the Business Cycle

In this paper we show that the prediction errors for unemployment vary over the business cycle. We initially use a macroeconomic data for the United States, because these data are available for a longer period than for...

January 31, 2022

Entries and Regional Growth: The Role of Relatedness

If new businesses and establishments are more closely related to economic activities taking place in a region, is this associated with higher regional growth a few years later? In this paper, we investigate the...

January 13, 2022

How far Do gazelles run? Growth Patterns of Regular Firms, High Growth Firms and Startups

High growth firms receive a lot attention from policy. In many countries, policies to stimulate economic growth target startups -- loosely defined as young firms that often rely on new technology to develop scaleable...

November 26, 2021

Pension Payout Preferences

Dutch retirees – and individuals who are close to retirement – show a clear interest in two alternatives for the default lifelong flat rate annuity. In a survey experiment with over a thousand participants we investigated how appealing these different payout options are to retirees, and what influences their preferences.

Opened piggy bank
November 17, 2021

The impact of co-payments for nursing home care on use, health, and welfare

In 2013, a reform (the vermogensinkomensbijtelling) increased co-payments for long-term care for people with financial wealth. A shown in a new empirical study, it induced older people to postpone nursing home use, but only by a few days on average. The reform reduced the financial pressure on the long-term care system, but at the cost of raising the financial risk of older adults.

an elderly woman with a walker
September 7, 2021

Optimal capital ratios for banks in the euro area

Capital buffers help banks to absorb financial shocks. This reduces the risk of a banking crisis. However, on the other hand capital requirements for banks can also lead to social costs, as rising financing costs can lead to higher interest rates for customers. In this research we make an exploratory analysis of the costs and benefits of capital buffers for groups of European countries.

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August 26, 2021

When financials get tough, life gets rough? Problematic debts and ill health

In this paper, we investigate whether individuals obtaining problematic debts are more likely to use mental healthcare or social guidance and/or financial help, and whether they have higher mental healthcare costs.

When financials get tough, life gets rough?
August 10, 2021

The contribution of business dynamics to productivity growth in the Netherlands

This paper analyses the declining firm dynamism in the Netherlands, which may explain part of the slowdown in productivity growth. We use a rich microdata set including nearly all corporations in the Netherlands during...

Work on machines