A well-performing life insurance industry benefits consumers, producers and insurance firm stockholders alike. Unfavourable market conditions stress the need for life insurers to perform well in order to remain solvent. Using a unique supervisory data set, this paper investigates competition and...

This paper investigates the cost efficiency and competitive behaviour of the non-life – or property and casualty – insurance market in the Netherlands over the period 1995-2012. We focus on the 2006 health care reform, where public health care insurance has been included in the...

We examine the reallocation of profits in the European and US banking sectors in the period of 1995 to 2004. Specifically, we ask whether the restructuring of both industries has contributed to an efficient reallocation of assets. Using a revised decomposition framework, we find that US banks...

This paper investigates whether technology spills over across national borders and technology regimes. We advocate a modeling strategy where changes in technical efficiency capture technology spillovers as industries absorb and implement the best-practice (frontier) technology. Recently...

This paper investigates the forces driving output change in a panel of EU manufacturing industries. A flexible modeling strategy is adopted that accounts for (i) inefficient use of resources, and (ii) differences in the production technology across industries. With our model we are able to...

The adequate performance of banks, insurers and pension funds is of crucial importance to their private and business customers. The prices and quality of financial products sold by such entities are largely determined by operational efficiency and the degree of competition in the markets...

Although works councils have, by and large, equally extensive legal rights in Germany and the Netherlands, this is the first econometric analysis that investigates the influence of Dutch works councils on firm performance. We use a nation-wide Dutch dataset with information on...

In the European Union, energy markets are increasingly being liberalized. A case in point is the European natural gas industry. The general expectation is that more competition will lead to lower prices and higher volumes, and hence higher welfare. This paper indicates that this might not happen...