This paper exploits a quasi-experiment to value the benefits of reducing urban traffic externalities. As a source of exogenous variation we use the opening of a new bypass in The Hague, the Netherlands, that reduced traffic on a number of local streets, leaving others unaffected. We calculate...

Optimal dike heights are of crucial importance to the Netherlands as almost 60% of its surface is under threat of flooding from sea, lakes, or rivers. This area is protected by more than 3,500 kilometres of dunes and dikes. These dunes and dikes require substantial yearly investments of more...

Under the Kyoto Protocol, a group of countries commit themselves to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases to some 5% below the 1990 level. Countries can decide to spread their reduction commitment over several gases to lower compliance costs. Employing a multi-gas strategy can offer...

Economic thought on climate policy as an instance of environmental regulation is strongly influenced by the principle of a uniform carbon price. Economists acknowledge that this principle breaks down in a “second-best†world with other distortions, such as taxes and market power in...

The particular situation of the youngest and oldest individuals on the labour market motivates age-specific labour market analysis. One topical case is employment protection for older workers. The effect of employment protection on the total number of jobs is ambiguous. The positive effect of...

Understanding fossil fuel supply behaviour is crucial for interpreting carbon leakage and assessing the potential effectiveness of border measures in climate policy. In most computable general equilibrium models, this fossil fuel supply is derived from a constant elasticity of substitution...

This paper reviews options of labour market-modelling in a CGE framework. On the labour-supply side, two principal modelling options are distinguished and discussed: aggregated, representative households and microsimulation based on individual household data.On the labour-demand side, we focus...

In labour markets with collective wage bargaining, progressivity of the labour income tax creates a trade-off that allows the degree of progressivity to be determined optimally. On the one hand, wages are lowered and unemployment decreases, on the other hand, the individual labour supply...

What are the excess costs of a separate 20% target for renewable energy as a part of the EU climate policy for 2020? We answer this question using a computable general equilibrium model, WorldScan, which has been extended with a bottom-up module of the electricity sector. The model set-up...

This study compares the expected retirement replacement rates of several cohorts of Dutch employees at the time of their planned retirement with the 'actual' replacement rates based on available pension records. We find that using reasonable indexation rates, the expected replacement...