Using data for more than 200 banks from 21 OECD countries for the period 2002 to 2008, we examine the impact of bank regulation and supervision on banking risk. Supervisory control, and regulations on capital and market entry have a significant impact on 'capital and asset risk', while...

It is widely believed that wage and productivity profiles of individual workers do not coincide at all ages. We give an overview of the theories which provide a rationale for this, and discuss the empirical literature. Human capital theories typically imply that wages rise with tenure, so that...

We study the causal relation between private wealth and retirement age. We propose two estimation strategies based on expected retirement age. The outcome variable is observed repeatedly over time. We correct first for the unobserved heterogeneity in the disutility of work by using panel data...

We quantify the relative importance of the precautionary saving motive in determining wealth accumulation. Puzzling results have appeared on the relative importance of the precautionary motive when this is derived either using a self reported measure of uncertainty about future income rather...

The Profit Elasticity (PE) is a new competition measure introduced in Boone (2008). So far, there was no direct proof that this measure can identify regimes of competition empirically. We focus on this issue using data of Genesove and Mullin (1998), in which different regimes of competition...

We review the literature on national innovation systems. We first focus on the emergence of the concept of innovation systems, reviewing its historical origins and three main flavours (associated to three “founding fathers†of the concept). After this, we discuss how the notion of...

This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve the energy efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes,...

We analyse the causal effect of education on starting and quitting smoking, using longitudinal data of Australian twins. We take into account the endogeneity of education, censoring of smoking durations and the timing of starting smoking versus that of completing education by using the flexible...

This paper provides an analysis of exclusive contracts between health care providers and insurers in a model where some consumers choose to stay uninsured. In case of a monopoly insurer, exclusion of a provider changes the distribution of consumers who choose not to insure. Although the...

This paper analyses two effects of the current Dutch regulation on the system operators of the electricity network and on teh decentralised generators of electricity, and suggests a number of improvements in the tariff regulation. The increase in the distributed generation of electricity, with...