This paper investigates the impact of alternative environmental policy instruments on technological innovations aiming to improve energy-efficiency in buildings. The empirical analysis focuses on three main types of policy instruments, namely regulatory energy standards in buildings codes,...

In January 2005, the Dutch government introduced the Childcare Act which replaced the former financing system which had elements of both supply- and demand-financing with a fully demand-financing system. Whereas previously public funds partly flowed to suppliers in the form of subsidies...

The 1999 Dutch Notary Act has initiated an ambitious deregulation process in the market for notary services in the Netherlands. We evaluate the impact of this liberalisation policy on (i) the level of competition in the profession and (ii) the quality of services. We compare the level of...

This study provides an overview of the policy of liberalisation that transformed the Dutch notary profession into one of the least regulated in Europe. We discuss the changes brought with the new Notary Act of 1999, the political debates and lobbying preceding the introduction of the Act, and...

In this report, we investigate whether policies that stimulate enrolment in S&E-studies are effective at increasing R&D-activity. Scarcity of science and engineering (S&E) graduates could potentially call for government intervention, because of the role of S&E's in R&D, and because R&D in turn...

This CPB Document provides a framework for the evaluation of non-profit organisations. This framework addresses the question under which conditions, and, if so, in what way non-profits should be stimulated. Essentially, in order to answer these questions, three steps can be followed: (i)...

Economic growth is ultimately driven by advances in productivity. In turn, productivity growth is driven by R&D and by utilisation of the public knowledge pool. This public knowledge pool is generated by universities and public research institutions. Underutilisation by firms of results from...

Do schools facing more competition in their neighbourhood perform better than schools facing less competition? As a measure of school quality, we look at the performance of pupils at the nationwide standard test (the so-called Cito test) in the final year of primary education. Since...

We study the conditions for the emergence of cooperation in a spatial common-pool resource (CPR) game. We consider three types of agents: cooperators, defectors and enforcers. The role of enforcers is to punish defectors for overharvesting the resource. Agents are located on a circle and they...