The effects of a policy measure often reach the consumer only after one or more intermediatesteps, for instance because the measure lowers the cost of an input for an industry producinga consumer good. This paper is concerned with the question how to measure such indirect effectscorrectly under...

Local policy makers seek ways to deal with abandoned industrial heritage in their jurisdictions. Much is demolished, but in some cases considerable investments are made to preserve the cultural aspects of industrial sites. The renewal plans are usually designed to stimulate urban renewal in the...

Although many researchers have investigated the value of open space in cities, few of them have compared them to the costs of providing this amenity. In this paper, we use the monocentric model of a city to derive a simple cost-benefit rule for the optimal provision of open space. The rule is...

In this paper we compare the predictive abilility of Stochastic Volatility (SV)models to that of volatility forecasts implied by option prices. We develop anSV model with implied volatility as an exogeneous var able in the varianceequation which facilitates the use of statistical tests for...

We study interaction between the trips of two types of drivers on a two-lane road who differ by their desired speeds. The difference in desired speeds causes congestion, because slow drivers force fast drivers to reduce their speed. An interesting aspect of this type of congestion is that...

In this paper we present an exact maximum likelihood treatment forthe estimation of a Stochastic Volatility in Mean(SVM) model based on Monte Carlo simulation methods. The SVM modelincorporates the unobserved volatility as anexplanatory variable in the mean equation. The same extension...

In this paper, we investigate congestion caused by differences in desired or possible speeds. Especially outside peak hours, speed differences are probably one of the most important reasons for congestion. Although the model setting, with one lane and no overtaking, may seem simple at first...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

This paper provides a link between car following theory and the economic theoryof road congestion by means of a theory of speed choice. According to this theory speedchoice is based on a trade-off between the benefits (shorter travel time) and cost (higheraccident risk) of driving faster....

Various economic theories are available to explain the existence of credit and default cycles. There remains empirical ambiguity, however, as to whether or these cycles coincide. Recent papers_new suggest by their empirical research set-up that they do, or at least that defaults and credit...