In the Dutch social health insurance scheme, health plans operate in a managed competition framework. Essential features of this framework are risk adjustment, open enrolment and community rating. The objective is to study how health plans determine their community rated premiums. Using a panel...

This paper measures the distortionary and distributional effects of housing subsidies. The results are discussed in the light of the main justifications for subsidising housing, i.e. the merit-good argument, external effects and the distribution motive. Our measurements reveal some patterns of...

Using the Dutch Labour Force Survey 1991-2001, the authors investigate the incidence of part-time employment in the country with the highest part-time employment rate of the OECD countries. Women fulfil most part-time jobs, but nevertheless a considerable fraction of men works part-time as...

This report summarises the findings of a study on the growth factors and growth prospects of the business services (BS) industry. It puts Dutch BS industry in an international comparative perspective, identifying its particular strengths and weaknesses. Lees ook het bijbehorende <a...

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows have increased substantially in the past two decades. These developments have motivated the appearance of a large number of empirical papers that test the expected benefits that FDI inflows are assumed to bring to the host countries. We survey the recent...

One of the achievements of the of the European Union (EU) is the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between the member states. The internal market for goods seems to function well, after the implementation of the Single Market programme in 1988. That is however not the case for...

The total pension premium rate consists of two components, the contribution rate and the catching-up premium rate. The contribution rate finances the accrual of pension rights while the catching-up premium finances (possible) wealth deficits of a pension fund. The contribution rate and the...

This paper explains the theoretical background, the analytical methods, calibrations, assumptions and computations of the skill inputs for the WorldScan analysis on the skills targets of the Lisbon agenda. The Lisbon skills targets are implemented in WorldScan using most recent theoretical and...

WorldScan, the CGE model for international policy analysis and long-term scenario studies, is applied regularly at the CPB. The production technology in the model is that of constant returns to scale and the market structure is characterized by perfect competition. However, it is a well known...

Characteristic roots, or eigenvalues, are a useful tool in the study of linear dynamic economic models. The relation between the roots and the model coefficients are expressed in the derivatives of the former with respect to the latter. In general, the roots are complex numbers. This note...