设备改造

简要论述了设备更新和改造决策的要素,并提出了设备维修部门对设备改造技术经济论证意见的重要性。     

The use of credit scoring in the mortgage industry

In times of increased focus on risk management, acquiring or growing comparatively low risk mortgage portfolios has become an attractive value proposition. Banks that pursue an aggressive growth strategy in this sector, do, however, require risk control mechanisms that enable them to make a clear judgment on how great a growth appetite they can afford to have in order to still grow profitably. Moreover, under Basel II, the proper quantification of mortgage portfolio risk tends to help the release of own capital, because the mortgage portfolio is one of those portfolios where the relative benefits of internal ratings-based approaches compared with the standardised approach are greatest. Credit scoring models in general, and credit scorecards in particular, are suitable methods for quantifying the risk of an individual mortgage applicant or mortgage customer. In addition to score card development, this paper reviews alternative scoring model types that could be used for mortgage scoring. It presents reasons why it is beneficial to build such models in-house, before focusing on the steps necessary for building a mortgage scorecard. Finally, it discusses the important topics of creating segments, deploying models and eventually monitoring models.     

Herausforderungen der geldpolitischen Kommunikation

Since many of the most important central banks have pushed their policy rates close to the zero lower bound and have also stretched their quantitative easing measures close to their limits, central bank communication is currently the most important policy tool to influence market expectations. But, if it is such an important tool, what should an optimal communication design look like? Which aspects are important and what are the limitations of this tool? The article revisits these questions in the light of the role of monetary policy in the recent financial crisis.     

The Rationality Behind Immigration Policy Preferences

Summary What drives stated policy preferences about the number of foreigners? Is it self-interest, as stressed by the political economy of immigration? Does social interaction affect this preference, or is the immigration policy preference completely in line with the preference for the aggregate population size? In this paper we distinguish each of these categories and show, for the case of the Netherlands, that each of these elements applies, although the effect of population size preference and self-interest are the most important elements. There is a clear divide across educational levels, as the less educated are more strongly opposed to immigration than the highly educated: the less educated are more likely to think there are too many foreigners. Experience with foreigners arising from social contact matters in positively appreciating immigrants, especially if people meet non-Western foreigners at work and school. Contact with foreigners while going out decreases peoples preference for immigrants. The ethnic concentration of the neighbourhood in which people live does not exert a noticeable effect on the evaluation of the number of foreigners present. The biggest effect on immigration policy preferences is, however, the aggregate population size preference of respondents.JEL classification F22, J15, J61Comments by Frans Willekens, Aat Liefbroer, and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.     

Broke,Ill, and Obese: Is There an Effect of Household Debt on Health?

We analyze the association between household indebtedness and different health outcomes using data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel from 1999 to 2009. We control for unobserved heterogeneity by applying fixed‐effects methods and furthermore use a subsample of constantly employed individuals plus lagged debt variables to reduce problems of reverse causality. We apply different measures of household indebtedness, such as the percentage shares of household income spent on consumer credit and home loan repayments (which indicate the severity of household indebtedness) and a binary variable of relative overindebtedness (which indicates a precarious debt situation). We find all debt measures to be strongly correlated with health satisfaction, mental health, and obesity. This relationship vanishes for obesity after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity while it stays significant with respect to worse physical and mental health.     

Big Data aus wettbewerblicher Sicht

Business models in the digital economy often rely on non-monetary payments from users, either in the form of attention for advertising or in the provision of personal data. Gathered data can be used to improve targeted advertising or develop new products and services. Besides these welfare gains, privacy issues may ensue, which can be mitigated by strict transparency provisions and welldefined property rights on data. Big data can furthermore establish barriers to entry if increasing returns to scale are present and thus lead to market concentration. However, the current competition policy framework seems mostly suitable to handle these issues.