This report presents an empirical analysis of competition in the market for life insurance. In this market, financial advisors play a large role. Therefore, the report devotes considerable attention to the functioning of the market for financial advice. The main findings are as follows....

Whenever you phone your mother, switch on the light, or buy health insurance you purchase a service or product from a chain of vertically related industries. Providers of these products or services need access to a telecommunications network, an electricity network or to health care...

The current institutional reforms in the Dutch healthcare sector may increase the extent of vertical relations (such as vertical contracts and vertical integration) between insurers and healthcare providers. Vertical relations may have both welfare increasing and welfare reducing effects. In...

We analyse downstream access and capacity choice in the market for wireless telecommunications, where spectrum rights are owned by vertically integrated duopolists and may be traded. In the market for wireless telecommunications, radio spectrum is an essential input. Prior to network...

This study analyzes under which circumstances it may be desirable for the government to stimulate open source software as a response to market failures in software markets. To consider whether policy intervention can increase dynamic efficiency, we discuss the differences between proprietary...

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...

We study optimal risk adjustment in imperfectly competitive health insurance markets when high-risk consumers are less likely to switch insurer than low-risk consumers. First, we find that insurers still have an incentive to select even if risk adjustment perfectly corrects for cost differences...

In this paper, the authors study optimal risk adjustment in imperfectly competitive health insurance markets when high-risk consumers are less likely to switch insurer than low-risk consumers.<font face="CMR10" size="3"><font face="CMR10" size="3">First, they find that insurers still have an incentive to select even if risk adjustment perfectly...</font></font>

This document presents four scenarios for the future of finance. The goal of our study is to imagine the future of finance and to identify challenges faced by policymakers in fighting systemic risk. It builds upon a tradition within the CPB to develop scenarios for policy analysis. We develop...

The paper focuses on the relationship between competition and quality in the Dutch hospital sector. We analyse the period of 2004-2008, in which a healthcare reform took place in the Netherlands, introducing competition in the healthcare sector. The increased attention to hospital quality and...