In the 1990s policy makers took various measures to stimulate competition. This memorandum investigates the question in which direction competition in the Dutch market sector has changed. Four competition indicators are used. These indicators are derived from a database of 87 000 firms as well...

Competition in the Dutch market sector as a whole probably slightly declined during 1993-2001. Within the market sector, a large variety in competition development exists. Competition changes have been rather small in many industries competition, but a considerable number of industries...

This paper has two aims. First, we uncover some salient components of fixed export costs, which play a crucial role in recent heterogeneous firms models of international trade. Second, we investigate whether the importance of these fixed export costs varies with the size of a firm’s...

This paper analyses the export market entry decisions of Dutch firms and their subsequent growth or market exit. When entering new markets, firms have to learn market conditions and have to search for new trade relations under uncertainty. We show that firms follow a stepping stone approach for...

The last four decades, Dutch exports and imports grew annually about 7.5%, while re-exports rocketed in the last two decades. Using a gravity approach this paper finds that the increase in trade is largely caused by income developments. Trade policy, consisting of reductions in import tariffs...

Even though the Netherlands was the world’s sixth largest exporter in 2009, the majority of Dutch firms does not engage in international trade at all, possibly because they are unable to cover the costs to enter specific foreign markets. What are these costs that limited the...

This document focuses on innovation, human capital, technology transfers and competition as potential sources of productivity growth for firms. It integrates the views of existing literature such as the two faces of R&D, the convergence debate and the existence of firm-level heterogeneity in...

The Dutch retail trade demonstrated a relatively meagre performance in terms of productivity (growth) during the 1990s, especially seen from an international perspective. This study analyses the productivity performance of the Dutch retail trade in more detail, and focuses on competition and...

In this study, we analyse changes in market power in the Dutch supermarket chain and discuss the effects on welfare. The supermarket chain includes consumers, supermarkets, buyer groups and food manufactures. We look at the theoretical background of market power.  Special attention has been...