There is a small but growing literature on the determinants of social capital. Most of these studies use a measure of trust to define social capital empirically. In this paper we use three different measures of social capital: the size of the individual’s social network, the extent of their...

This paper considers a simple Continuous Beliefs System (CBS) toinvestigate the effects on price dynamics of several behavioralassumptions: (i) herd behaviour; (ii) a-synchronous updating ofbeliefs; and (iii) heterogeneity in time horizons (memory) amongagents. The recently introduced concept of...

Most empirical studies assume only monotonic preferences for households. Behavioral research however providessubstantial evidence that preferences for wealth are measured relative to a reference point. In this paper weintroduce and solve a two-period consumption and savings model for a...

See the article in <I>Computers Environment and Urban Systems</I> (2013). Volume 38, pages 67-77.<P> This paper aims to provide a new methodological and empirical contribution to the rising literature on the relative performance and benchmarking of large cities in a competitive world. On the basis of a...</p></i>

Is there a case to be made for preferential treatment of the exposed sector in an economy when compliance to an aggregate emissions constraint induced by an international environmental agreement is mandatory? This question is being debated in many countries, including The Netherlands, in the...

This paper is dating from 1995, when it has been presented at the Ragnar Frisch Centennial Memorial Conference in Oslo. It has never been published before.In this paper for the first time the Cantril ladder question data have been employed in the way which later has become known as happiness...

We compare reported job satisfaction with vignette evaluations of hypothetical jobs by using a British, Greek and Dutch data set, containing 95 randomly assigned vignettes. In order to test comparability of international data sets recently the method of anchoring vignettes has been introduced by...

This paper provides arguments in favor of using subjective questions as a proxy to measure welfare and well-being. This approach makes it possible to avoid having to define welfare and well-being means and having to identify the relevant indicators. Instead, individuals themselves define their...

In this paper I examine various extensions of the Nelson and Siegel (1987) model with the purpose of fitting and forecasting the term structure of interest rates. As expected, I find that using more flexible models leads to a better in-sample fit of the term structure. However, I show that the...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <I>Economics Letters</I> (2014). Vol. 123(3), pages 291-294.<P> Hausman (1978) developed a widely-used model specification test that has passed the test of time. The test is based on two estimators, one being consistent under the null hypothesis but...</p></i>