The lack of available prices in the Dutch life insurance industry makes competition an elusive concept that defies direct observation. Therefore, this article investigates competition by analysing several factors which may affect the competitive nature of a market and various indirect...

This article is the first that applies a new measure of competition, the Boone indicator, to the banking industry. This approach is able to measure competition of bank market segments, such as the loan market, whereas many well-known measures of competition can consider the entire banking market...

This article applies quantile regression to assess the factors that influence the risk of incurring high trading costs. Using data on the equity trades of the world's second largest pension fund in the first quarter of 2002, we show that trade timing, momentum, volatility and the type of broker...

This article analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans during the period 1994--2004, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower spreads...

According to theory, institutional investors face both risk-management and risk-shifting incentives. This article assesses the relevance of these conflicting incentives for Dutch pension funds and insurance firms over the period 1995 to 2009. Using a unique and extended data set, we observe a...

Several attempts have been made in the literature to measure money laundering. However, the adequacy of these models is difficult to assess, as money laundering takes place secretly and, hence, goes unobserved. An exception is Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML), a special form of trade abuse...

This article investigates responses to changes in solvency by occupational pension funds using a unique panel data set containing the balance sheets of all registered pension funds in the Netherlands over a period of 13 years (1993--2005). A fixed discount rate for liabilities in the supervisory...