We examine vertical integration and exclusive vertical restraints in health-care markets where insurers and hospitals bilaterally bargain over contracts. We employ a bargaining model in a concentrated health-care market of two hospitals and two health insurers competing on premiums. Without...

This paper introduces indicators about the division of labour to measure and interpret recent trends in employment in the Netherlands. We show that changes in the division of labour occur at three different levels: the level of the individual worker, the level of the industry and the spatial...

Residential development at the urban fringe raises the cost of trips to open space. We derive a simple expression for the tax that internalizes this effect of sprawl in a monocentric city andapply it using survey data on recreational activity. Urban sprawl is inefficient if landowners ignore...

Intergenerational risk sharing by funded pension schemes may increase welfare in an ex ante sense. However, it also suffers from a time inconsistency problem. In particular, young generations may be unwilling to start participating in a pension scheme if this requires them to make huge transfers...

This research compares systemic risk in the banking sector, the insurance sector, the construction sector, and the food sector. To measure systemic risk, we use extreme negative returns in stock market data for a time-varying panel of the 20 largest U.S. firms in each sector. We find that...

This CPB Discussion Paper addresses two policy questions with respect to public defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. Firstly, does a funded DB pension scheme increase welfare? Secondly, how large is the commitment problem of pension funds after an adverse capital market shock? This CPB...

The behaviour of migrant women on the labour market is influenced by a variety of factors, among which the culture of the home and the host country. Part of the literature investigates the role of home-country culture. This study extends the literature by including a measure for the influence...

Using detailed micro data on the entire wage distribution in the Netherlands, this paper examines trends in Dutch (real pre-tax) wage inequality between 2000 and 2008. For many years, the Netherlands has been considered an exception to the general trend of growing wage inequality that most...

Based on micro-data on individual workers for the period 2000–2005, we show that regional wage differentials in the Netherlands are small but present. A large part of these differentials can be attributed to individual characteristics of workers. Remaining effects are partially...

Recently, there has been considerable debate about a reform of the Dutch system of student support, in which grants will be (partly) replaced by loans. The discussion focuses on the effects on student enrollment decisions. Surprisingly, no study has yet analysed the effect of receiving a grant...