This paper investigates the determinants of directed technical change at the firm level in the electricity generation sector. We use firm-level data on patents filed in renewable (REN) and fossil fuel (FF) technologies by 5,261 European firms over the period 1978-2006. We investigate how energy...

This paper studies the knowledge spillovers generated by renewable-energy technologies, unraveling the technological fields that benefit from knowledge developed in storage, solar, wind, marine, hydropower, geothermal, waste and biomass energy technologies. A <a href="http://www.cpb.nl/en/publication/on-which-technologies-do-renewable-energy-innovations-build-on">CPB Background Document...

Do schools facing more competition in their neighbourhood perform better than schools facing less competition? As a measure of school quality, we look at the performance of pupils at the nationwide standard test (the so-called Cito test) in the final year of primary education. Since...

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,...

This paper investigates the question whether crime reduces investment in human capital or whether education reduces criminal activity by using fixed effect estimation on data of Australian twins. The study takes genetic and socio-economic factors shared by the twins into account. We find that...

This CPB Discussion Paper studies a conditional block grant that Dutch municipalities receive for welfare-to-work programs. Many municipalities do not fully use this grant, although programs are beneficial for them. We argue that municipalities incur expenses to use the grant. If these costs...

This paper applies the theory of auctioning incentive contracts to welfare-to-work programs. In several countries, the government procures welfare-to-work projects to employment service providers. In doing so, the government trades off adverse selection (the winning provider is not the most...

This paper examines the effects of experience rating on the inflow into disability insurance (DI) in the Netherlands, using unique longitudinal administrative data from the Dutch social benefit administration for the years 2000-2002. We follow a difference-in-differences approach to identify...

In this paper, we present evidence on the effect of greater numbers of police personnel on victimisation of crime and experience of nuisance. We make use of individual data from a Dutch victimisation survey unique in its size, duration and scope. By using individual victimisation data we...

In this paper, we estimate the degree of substitution between enrolment into Disability Insurance (DI) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) in the Netherlands. Starting in the 1990s many policy measures aimed at reducing DI enrolment, and increase labour force participation. We quantify whether...