Some studies in the literature exert strong criticism with regards to the Structural Policy of the European Union. This study reviews the past Structural Policy and pays special attention to the proposals for the next budgetary period 2007-2013 as laid down in the Dutch IBO-report (2001)....

This paper provides a survey of the economic literature on immigration. We first give an impression of immigration in the Netherlands in 1500-1960, followed by a discussion of the long term economic consequences of the mass migration preceding Word War I. We then discuss some literature which...

We first sketch how central banks have used unconventional monetary policy measures by using three indicators based on the composition of the balance sheet of eleven central banks. Our analysis suggests that although the ECB's balance sheet has increased dramatically during the crisis, the...

This paper studies the transmission of monetary policy to macroeconomic variables in three new EU Member States in comparison with that in the euro area with structural time-varying coefficient vector autoregressions. In line with the Lucas Critique reduced-form models like standard VARs are not...

This paper studies the effects of more than 40 years of European integration on prices. Up to now, most empirical research in this area has been micro-based. We follow a macro approach. On the basis of scaled HICP strong evidence is found for price convergence in Europe, especially in the 1960s...

Since the mid-nineties, usage of the debit card by Dutch consumers has increased considerably. While accounting for three quarters of the total value of retail sales in the early nineties, in 2004 the value share of cash payments had fallen to about two quarters. If the cash to payment card...

Inflation differentials resulting from EMU enlargement have so far mostly been discussed within the Balassa-Samuelson framework, i.e. resulting from inflation in nontradable goods. We analyse the inflationary consequences of convergenceof tradable goods' prices. Using disaggregated price level...

One of the key advances of the internet age is the increase in transparency. Does high price transparency imply that consumers in different countries pay the same price for similar goods? We compare prices for new, tradable goods sold via the internet auction site eBay. We find ample evidence...

In 2005, some 25,000 counterfeit euro banknotes were identified in the Netherlands, representing a fictitious amount of two million euro. In collaboration with the TNO research institute, DNB has investigated how accurately cash handlers and consumers with no cash handler experience can...

This report studies the reaction of the level and volatility of the euro-dollar exchange rate to statements of ECB officials during the first years of EMU. We focus on statements on monetary policy and the (potential) strength of the euro. We find that the Bundesbank has dominated the news...