We use a panel data set of about 1.7 million hospital records in 4,000 Dutch zip code regions for the years 2006-2009. We estimate the effect of physician fees and physician density on regional variation in hospital care for nine different treatments. Our results show that a 1 percent increase...

Mirror data are observations of bilateral variables such as trade from one country to another, reported by both countries. The efficient estimation of a bilateral variable from its mirror data, for example when compiling consistent international trade statistics, requires information about the...

This paper studies the interaction between macro-economic risk and paygo social security. For this, it uses an applied general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of risk-averse households. The sources of risk are productivity shocks and depreciation shocks. The risk profile of...

In financial markets, traders deal in assets and options. There exist many types of options and the best-known are the European call and put option. These options give holders the right to buy or sell assets at a specific future time for a predetermined price. This paper examines options of...

Most health insurance schemes use some sort of cost sharing to curb the moral hazard that is inherent to insurance. It is common to limit this cost sharing, by applying a deductible or a stop loss, for example. This can be motivated from an insurance perspective: without a cap, coinsurance...

This CPB Discussion Paper estimates the effects of a comprehensive school reform program on high-stakes test scores in Amsterdam. The program implements a systematic and performance-based way of working within weakly performing primary schools and integrates measures such as staff coaching,...

Using a structural vector autoregression with time-varying parameters, I analyze to what extent the dynamic effects of unanticipated changes in tax policy have changed structurally over the post World War II period in the United States. Read also: <a href="http://www.cpb.nl/en/publication/reduced-rank-time-varying-vector-autoregressions">CPB Discussion Paper 270</a> '<em>Reduced-rank...</em>

The paper tests the role of agglomeration effects on the export decision of services firms. Recent theories on trade with heterogeneous firms predict that export participation goes along with sunk market-entry costs. Only the more productive firms will be able to overcome these sunk costs....

The lack of available prices in the Dutch life insurance industry makes competition an elusive concept that defies direct observation. Therefore, this paper investigates competition by analysing several factors which may affect the competitive nature of a market and various indirect measurement...

Targeted advertising can benefit consumers through lower prices for access to websites. Yet, if consumers dislike that websites collect their personal information, their welfare may go down. We study competition for consumers between websites that can show targeted advertisements. We find that...