This paper presents an analysis of the financial behaviour of Dutch households on the basis of the DNB Household Survey. The results of this survey provide insight into the backgrounds and consequences of the persistent rise of household debt. The increase in mortgage debt is related to mortgage...

Currently, nearly 90% of all prices of consumer goods and services in the Netherlands are psychological, conveniently broken or round prices. After converting these 'attractive' guilder prices into euro using the official conversion rate, the resulting euro prices are generally not attractive....

This study analyses Dutch employment growth and dynamics during the booming end 1990s. In this period many new jobs were created as employment growth was strongly positive. Next to these net flows of employment the gross flows of employment ­i.e. the numbers of jobs created and number of jobs...

An empirical investigation of the relationship between market share or concentration and return on equity or assets provides evidence for the existence of a profit-structure relationship in the European banking sector. Testing several market-power and efficient-structure theories reveals that...

We hold the fort for linear specification of monetary policy and economic activity in Europe. Using data on the last two and a half decades we cannot reject the hypothesis that monetary policy is a linear process and we find mixed results regarding economic activity.

This paper studies the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy within an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Results suggest that, in a model in which bonds and money are counted as net wealth, the primary source of cross-country heterogeneity in response to a common monetary shock is the...

In this paper, the asymptotic distribution of the parameters of the moving average representation of structural VAR models with long run restrictions is derived. Moreover, it is shown that the structural model can easily be estimated in a two step procedure, where the reduced form model...

In this paper we examine the consequences of having a Central Bank whose preferences are state contingent. This has been identified in the literature as a Central Bank that is 'rationally inattentive' or 'constructively ambiguous'. The new feature in this paper is that we show how the private...

In this report a stochastic general equilibrium model is developed, which is intended for monetary policy analysis on a EU-level. The focus is on two central elements. First, liquidity effects of monetary policy are studied in the model. It appears that not only frictions on the credit markets,...

This study presents a pension model geared to the typical pension contract in the Netherlands. It is based on a defined benefit/average earnings pension system. Nominal benefits are guaranteed and indexation is intended. The model provides a framework for analysing adjustments to such factors as...