The Netherlands has a unique tradition in which all major Dutch political parties provide CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis with highly detailed proposals for the tax benefit system in every national election. This information allows us to quantitatively measure the...

We develop a new model of trade in which educational institutions drive comparative advantage and determine the distribution of human capital within and across countries. Our framework exploits a multiplicity of sectors and the continuous support of human capital choices to demonstrate that...

Standard economics omits the role of narratives (the stories that people tell themselves and others) when they make all kinds of decisions. Narratives play a role in understanding the environment; focusing attention; predicting events; motivating action; assigning social roles and identities;...

Globalization has led to huge increases in import volumes, but the literature on import forecasting is still in its infancy. We introduce the first leading indicator especially constructed for total import growth, the so-called Import Climate. It builds on the idea that the import demand of the...

In socio-economic sciences the RePEc network (Research Papers in Economics) has become an essential source for the gathering and the spread of both existing and new economic research. Furthermore, it is currently the largest bibliometric database in economic sciences containing 33 different...