The paper develops a stand-alone and testable gravity model to explain international patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI). The core model is based on knowledge-based gravitational forces that are directly or indirectly linked to a country's economic mass (GDP). The micro-economic part of...

The paper models the links between public and firm-level knowledge processes. The knowledge-capital (KC) theory assumes that firms use their private knowledge assets to set up foreign subsidiaries. Countries with large outward FDI stocks should have a relative abundance of proprietary knowledge...

The first of both short essays deals with two structural constraints that distinguish services markets from e.g. markets for manufacturing products. The 'nearness restriction' requires that producer and consumer of the service product are present on the same location. The 'non-storability...

The paper develops a new stand-alone structural gravity model for explaining bilateral FDI patterns. We employ the model to analyse the impact of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and other policies on bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI). We use the...

The paper tests the predictions of models of international trade with heterogeneous firms. The results based for the services industry cor- respond with most of the prediction. Exporting firms are more productive than comparable non-exporting services firms, by several productivity measures. In...

The elaborates the methods for quantifying the administrative burden for companies that stems from mandatory government-related information requirements. The paper was written to support the introduction (under the Dutch EU presidency, 2004) by EU Member States of the co-called 'standard cost...

This paper utilizes new Dutch transaction-level data on international trade to investigate the microeconomic patterns of Dutch exports. First, we show that self-selection based on ex-ante productivity drives firms' export decisions, which we subsequently relate to various sources of fixed...

The paper investigates the welfare aspects of the European Union's restrictions on labour immigration, especially the restrictions on the free movement of medium- and low-skilled labour from outside the EU. The welfare implications of restrictive labour immigration are found to be considerable,...

Background study for a project on modelling and forecasting the markets for cocoa and chocolate. Cocoa powder is an intermediate product that is widely used in the food industry. The paper develops a simulation model for the intermediate cocoa powder market showing the intricate relations with...

This study analyses how domestic regulation affects trade in services through commercial presence and to what extent regulation, level and heterogeneity, has an impact on the choice of mode of servicing a foreign market for total services, financial services, transport, communication, computer,...