The ageing of the Dutch population, resulting in an increase in the number of retirees relative to the working population, has induced a debate about the sustainability of the Dutch first pillar pension scheme (AOW). The system is financed as a pay-as-you-go system. This paper explores possible...

This paper explores the welfare effects of a number of collective pension contracts, distinguishing between the two welfare effects. We find that collective schemes can be either superior or inferior to individual schemes. Collective pension contracts allow for intergenerational risk sharing...

Most health insurance schemes use some sort of cost sharing to curb the moral hazard that is inherent to insurance. It is common to limit this cost sharing, by applying a deductible or a stop loss, for example. This can be motivated from an insurance perspective: without a cap, coinsurance...

Growing pension savings lead to deeper capital markets. This can have a positive effect on economic growth by allowing firms that are more dependent on external finance to grow faster. We study this effect using data on 69 industrial sectors in 34 OECD countries for the period 2001-2010...

Increasing labour market flexibility is at the top of the European agenda. A new and challenging view is a lack of mobility in the labour market may arise from rigidities in the housing market. The research in this book has been inspired by the intriguing hypothesis put forward by Andrew...

In response to the challenge of managing the risks of a changing climate, there is no single optimal transition path for energy technology due to uncertainty in several dimensions. In this paper, we use the MERGE model, a long-term optimization model of the global energy and climate systems...

International outsourcing is an important aspect of economic globalization. Since outsourcing leads to more specialization, it is expected to reduce production costs and to increase productivity. <span>This study uses microdata on Dutch firms to investigate the effects of international and domestic...</span>

In this study, we gauge the impact of social interactions on individual retirement preferences. A survey including self-assessments and vignette questions shows that individual preferences are affected by preferences and actual retirement behavior of the social environment. Retirement from...

Large banks derive a funding advantage from being too-big-to-fail, while small banks do not. To estimate the funding advantage we explain the CDS spreads of small banks in six major European countries during the crisis by market fundamentals and bank-specific characteristics. Next, we...

In the policy debate on increasing the statutory retirement age, the issue has been raised to make an exception for workers with demanding occupations, since health considerations may make it unreasonable to expect them to work longer. <span style="color: #000000;">We use unique Dutch survey data to analyze the general...</span>