People want to live nearby consumption amenities as this saves time on commuting. This paper develops a residential location model in which the geographical range and the magnitude of amenity benefits as reflected in residential prices can ex post be assessed. First we extend a standard...

This paper assesses the increase in test scores of educational achievements in primary schools in Amsterdam by analyzing data of a large sample of schools, including scores on a published test and scores on similar independently taken tests that are not published. In 1995, the municipality of...

The strategic and welfare implications of group contracts for health insurance are not well understood. We estimate a model to determine which factors explain the price of group contracts. In countries like the US and the Netherlands health insurance is provided by private firms, which can...

Both school level and individual student level data indicate that information on highschool quality published by a national newspaper affects school choice in the Netherlands. The positive effects are particularly large for the academic school track. First, we study the causal effect of...

As from 1997, the national newspaper Trouw has published quality scores of secondary schools in every year, using information of the schools inspectorate on, amongst other things, the average grades at the final examinations and the throughput of pupils in lower forms. How do schools respond to...

This paper introduces indicators about the division of labour to measure and interpret recent trends in employment in the Netherlands. We show that changes in the division of labour occur at three different levels: the level of the individual worker, the level of the industry and the spatial...

Collective funded pension schemes with defined benefits (DB) raise welfare through intergenerational risk sharing, but may lower welfare through distortion of the labour-leisure decision. This paper compares the welfare gains with the welfare losses. In many countries, collective funded pension...

This study presents recently available data on the microstructure of Dutch exports and the relation between export participation and productivity at the firrm and establishment-level. We test whether recent theories of international trade with heterogeneous firms can explain the patterns in the...