From a macroeconomic point of view, Dutch households are in a basically sound financial position.Nevertheless, at a microeconomic level substantial financial risks may exist. This report presents a profile of the most vulnerable households with special attention to the mortgage debt/house value...

This report reviews Thomas J. Sargents essay 'The Conquest of American Inflation' (1999). Sargent searches for a model which can explain postwar US inflation and which may shed light on the dynamic forces which drive this pattern. Following Sargent, the conquest of US inflation is due to a...

Against the background of past bank merger activities the present overview discusses the recent empirical literature on bank mergers, banking efficiency and the existence of scale and product mix economies for banks. Previous mainly US-based bank cost studies generally reveal that only minor...

This research memorandum analyses the results of a survey among mortgage owners by order of the Nederlandsche Bank. The questionnaire considers spending financed by taking out second mortgages and expectations about future developments on the housing and mortgage market and the tax relief of...

This paper reports on the findings of a survey among Dutch households (as part of the DNB Household Survey in 2003) about many aspects (expectations, concerns, attitude and preferences) of their pensions and the old-age-arrangements in the Netherlands. We explore whether the outcomes are related...

This article investigates the extent of capital market interest rate convergence among six EU countries on the one hand, and a group of four countries with floating exchange rates - US, Germany, Japan and Switzerland - on the other. We conclude that interest rate changes within the EU have been...

This study investigates the consequences of dynamics in the term structure of Dutch interest rates for the accurateness of value-at-risk models. Therefore, value-at-risk measures are calculated using historical simulation, variance-covariance and Monte Carlo simulation methods. For a ten days...

In this paper, a structural vector error correction model (S-VECM) is estimated to investigate three essential prerequisites for a successful monetary targeting strategy: stability, controllability and predictability. First, multivariate cointegration techniques are used to identify two...

One popular view on the current strength of the US dollar is that the higher growth in the US compared to Europe has stimulated foreigners to buy American assets, thereby driving up the exchange rate. In this paper a modified portfolio balance model is presented, in which it is shown that the...