Opinions on the Tax Deductibility of Mortgages and the Consensus Effect

Summary We present the results of a survey-experiment – using a representative sample of the Dutch population – in which we relate respondents’ opinion about a restriction of the tax deductibility of mortgages to their estimates about other people’s opinions. We find a strong consensus effect; meaning that respondents’ estimates of others’ opinions are related to their own opinion. Furthermore, we find that the size of the effect is not affected by the ambiguity of the question posed. The provision of arguments pro and contra the tax provision and monetary incentives for accuracy reduce the consensus effect, but only so in conjunction. Finally, we find that house owners display a significantly stronger consensus effect. Our results suggest that both cognitive and motivational factors are responsible for the consensus effect. Aside from the consensus effect, our survey gives interesting insights into people’s opinion on tax deductibility of mortgages. A majority consider a general restriction to be unfair, but a proposal to restrict only mortgages as of a certain size meets with much more approval. We thank Marcel Das and Corrie Vis of CentERdata for their excellent support in conducting the survey-experiment and two referees of this journal and Dirk Engelmann for helpful comments. Financial support from the Faculty of Economics and Business administration is gratefully acknowledged.     

The Innovation Threshold

Summary This paper discusses a model for analysing the sales of new products. This model accounts for the fact that, even among those companies with permanent R&D activities, a fraction of the firms did not have sales of innovative products over a two-year observation period. We propose a model in which the fixed costs of introduction are a major concern in the decision-making process. We apply a censored regression model, extended by a firm-specific threshold. We use a structural model to estimate the fixed costs of introducing new products to the market, and explain subsequent sales of innovative products. We examine an indicator of innovative output, i.e. the sales of products ‘new to the firm’. We estimate fixed cost thresholds by using data from the Dutch section of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) of 1998. R&D intensity, competition, and market structure all have a positive impact on the sales of new products. The most important factors that reduce the fixed cost threshold of introduction are product-related R&D investments, R&D subsidies, and knowledge spillovers. We would like to thank Geert Ridder, Alfred Kleinknecht and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and discussion.     

Labour hoarding in a disequilibrium model of the Dutch labour market

Summary This paper presents a method to integrate labour hoarding into a disequilibrium model of the labour market. Disequilibrium indicators for the labour market that include labour hoarding are constructed. These indicators, being important determinants of policy multipliers with respect to employment, are found to be less volatile than the corresponding disequilibrium indicators for the goods market which are available from business surveys. The lower volatility reflects the role of labour hoarding as a buffer between actual and efficient employment levels. Our results indicate that labour hoarding in Dutch enterprises ranges from a minimum of 0.5 per cent of employment in early 1985 to a maximum of 7.0 per cent in 1975. Furthermore, the paper pays special attention to the modelling of mismatch unemployment and to the simulation results of an empirical disequilibrium macromodel of the Dutch economy.The authors thank M.M.G. Fase and two anonymous referees for their useful comments.     

企业使命与员工绩效关系探讨

员工在特定的工作关系条件下发挥自己的技能并取得良好的绩效;员工认同的企业使命是促发员工持续提高绩效的主要动力;管理阶层在运用企业使命提高员工绩效过程中要承担相应的职责。     

A Classification of Dutch Manufacturing based on a Model of Innovation

Summary The paper studies the degree of homogeneity of innovative behavior in order to determine empirically an industry classification of Dutch manufacturing that can be used for policy purposes. Defining homogeneity in terms of an economic model distinguishes our classification from existing taxonomies such as those of the OECD, Pavitt and the various classifications based on a principal components analysis. We use a two-limit tobit model with sample selection, which explains the decisions by business enterprises to innovate and the impact these decisions have on the share of innovative sales. The model is estimated for eleven industries based on the Dutch Standard Industrial Classification (SBI 1993). A likelihood ratio (LR) test is then performed to test for equality of the parameters across industries. We find that Dutch manufacturing consists of three groups of industries in terms of innovative behavior, a high-tech group, a low-tech group and the industry of wood. The same pattern shows up in the three Dutch Community Innovation Surveys. The empirical part of this study has been carried out at the Centre for Research of Economic Microdata at Statistics Netherlands. The authors wish to thank Statistics Netherlands, and in particular Bert Diederen, for helping us in accessing and using the Micronoom data set. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors. The authors also wish to thank Fran?ois Laisney, Patrick Waelbroek and participants at presentations in Maastricht, Strasbourg, Leuven and Lille for their helpful comments. The first author acknowledges financial support from METEOR.     

Private Equity and Shareholder Activism: Summary of the 2007 Annual Meeting Reports of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association

Summary This Communication is a summary of the 2007 Annual Meeting Reports of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association. It draws a few policy conclusions in relation to private equity, hedge funds and shareholder activism in the Netherlands. This richly varied collection of the 2007 reports and columns of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association adequately reflects the diversity of analyses and opinions on private equity, hedge funds and shareholder activism in the Dutch society. How the balance in corporate governance will be restored is something that cannot be determined precisely at this moment. However, the reports and columns in this collection contain many good and interesting recommendations that can serve as guidelines for academics and policymakers. We would like to thank the Board of the Koninklijke Vereniging voor de Staathuishoudkunde for the confidence they have placed in us as editors of the Annual Meeting Reports 2007 on ‘Private Equity and Shareholder Activism’. We would also like to thank the authors of the reports and columns for their excellent contributions to this collection. It is a great honour for us that so many renowned policymakers and scholars immediately showed themselves willing to lend their cooperation to the creation of this unique collection of reports and columns.     

经营环境、高管薪酬与会计信息质量

将我国转型时期企业外部经营环境和内部治理相结合,以2007—2014年沪深两市A股上市公司为样本,实证检验了经营环境对高管薪酬之于会计信息质量的影响。研究发现,经营环境越好,高管薪酬越高;企业经营环境对于高管薪酬之于会计信息质量具有显著的抑制作用;进一步回归结果表明,经营环境对民营企业高管薪酬之于会计信息质量的抑制作用比国有企业更强;另外,经营环境对保护性行业高管薪酬之于会计信息质量的影响明显小于竞争性行业。该研究结果丰富了会计信息质量影响因素的相关文献,不仅为宏观经营环境对微观企业的影响提供了经验证据,也为企业薪酬契约的设计提供参考依据。     

Payment Instruments as Perceived by Consumers – Results from a Household Survey

Summary Survey results show that Dutch consumers perceive paying in cash as an inexpensive way to pay, compared to paying with electronic payment cards. This finding partly explains the low usage of electronic payment cards in point-of-sale (POS) payments. The objective of the survey was to identify price and non-price features of payment instruments that can be used to stimulate the use of electronic payment cards. Their attractiveness can be increased, through technological modifications that enhance their convenience and by increasing the number of acceptance points. Making it less expensive for consumers to pay with payment cards could also increase the usage of payment cards. I would like to thank Rein Kieviet, Maarten van Rooij, Stijn Schmitz, Ariena van Wageningen and especially Corrie Vis of CentERdata for their help in collecting the data. Furthermore, I would like to thank two anonymous referees, Wilko Bolt, Hans Brits, Jeff Dominitz, Beth Kiser, Beth Klee, Jed Kolko, Philip Maier, Carlo Winder and participants of the DNB lunch seminar, the FRB research seminar and the Boston FED ‘Consumer behaviour and Payment Choice’ conference for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. All remaining errors are my own. The views expressed in this paper are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of the Nederlandsche Bank.     

Duration of unemployment in the Dutch youth labour market

Summary This paper is concerned with the specification and estimation of a one-state proportional hazard model to explain the duration of unemployment in the Dutch youth labour market. Special attention is given explaining the unequal distribution of unemployment experiences among young labour force participants. The model is estimated using data from a 1984 national random sample of young people unemployed in May and interviewed in October/November. It is found that the replacement ratio has no significant effect. The predicted youth wage on the other hand is significant. The paper also presents and compares different functional forms for modelling duration dependence and heterogeneity.A more extensive version of this paper was published by the Organisation for Strategic Labour Market Research (OSA) in The Hague as working paper nr. 14, 1985. We wish to thank this organisation for its encouragement and for its financial support. We also wish to thank M. Bom, J. Hartog, T. Manders, E. de Regt and G. Ridder for their comments and help.     

Exploring the Margins of Dutch Exports: A Firm-Level Analysis

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 market-entry costs: governance and regulatory quality, the extent of corruption, and cultural proximity. Second, we provide evidence that firms learn to export by trial and error, so as to obtain experience in exporting and to gather knowledge about the potential of foreign markets. Such experimentation appears to be reflected in the volatility of a firm’s export product portfolio. More volatility is associated with a higher survival rate in the export market. Finally, we draw conclusions on the potential implications for trade policy.     

Forecasting Inflation: An Art as Well as a Science!

Summary In this study, we build two forecasting models to predict inflation Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the Netherlands and for the euro area. The models provide point forecasts and prediction intervals for both the components of the HICP and the aggregated HICP -index itself. Both models are small-scale linear time series models allowing for long-run equilibrium relationships between HICP components and other variables, notably the hourly wage rate and the import or producer prices. The model for the Netherlands is used to generate the Dutch inflation projections for the eurosystem’s Narrow Inflation Projection Exercise (NIPE). The recursive forecast errors for several forecast horizons are evaluated for all models, and are found to outperform a naive forecast and optimal AR models. Moreover, the same result holds for the Dutch NIPE projections, which have been provided quarterly since 1999. The aggregation method to predict total HICP inflation generally outperforms the direct method, except for long horizons in the case of the Netherlands. We thank an anonymous referee of this journal and participants of the second Conference of the Euro Area Business Cycle Network, the 10th International Conference on Computing in Economics and Finance and seminar participants at De Nederlandsche Bank, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Maastricht University, in particular Filippo Altissimo, Bob Chirinko, Bertrand Candelon, Denise Osborn and Adrian Pagan for useful comments.     

Dynamics of Environmental Regulation and Voters’ Biased Beliefs: A Political Economy Approach

This paper develops a political economy model which determines the conditions of cycles in environmental regulation. It analyzes the impact of both interest groups and voters who have biased political beliefs. Such biased beliefs are the result of the influence of activist interest groups that strategically use the beliefs formation process among ignorant voters (cascade effect). The cascade effect biases the perception of the efficiency of regulatory instruments and affects the behavior of the politician. Our model seems particularly relevant to explain the evolution of environmental policies, which are characterized by scientific controversies, such as climate change policies. The high media coverage of climate issues, as well as persistent debates among experts, is a favorable context for the influence of activist interest groups that use the public’s cognitive biases.     

On the hump-shaped output effect of monetary policy in an open economy

Results of empirical research have revealed a characteristic hump-shaped effect of a monetary policy shock on output: The effect of the shock builds to a peak after several months and then gradually dies out. We analyze, in the context of a ‘new open economy macroeconomics’ model, factors that imply a hump-shaped response of output to a monetary policy shock. We find that a hump-shaped effect of a monetary policy shock on output is likely to result if the model features a “catching-up with the Joneses” effect, pricing-to-market behavior of firms, and imperfect international financial market integration. We thank two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Motives for Corporate Social Responsibility

In this article we analyze the motives of executives to take responsibility for the labor, environmental and social aspects of their business. We distinguish three motives: one extrinsic (financial) and two intrinsic (ethical and altruistic) motives and empirically investigate the influences of these motives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by means of a sample of 473 executives. The estimation results show that for social aspects of CSR, executives are significantly more driven by intrinsic motives than by the extrinsic motive. But also for environmental aspects of CSR intrinsic motives provide stronger stimulus than the extrinsic motive.     

Testing Korteweg's rational expectations model for a small open economy

Summary Korteweg extended the Barro, Lucas, Sargent, Wallace type of rational expectations model to a small open economy. This paper tests Korteweg's model with Dutch data. A major error in the specification and estimation is pointed out and corrected: the differenced expected variables are not defined consistently. This error implies that Korteweg's and Bomhoff's previous empirical results on the model are invalid. The test results for the corrected model indicate that this model has to be rejected for The Netherlands. The restrictions implied by an extremely simple empirical alternative are, however, not rejected.I would like to thank Dr. Th.E. Nijman, Professors F. van der Ploeg, W.H. Buiter and J.J.M. Theeuwes and Dr. A. J. de Zeeuw for their stimulus and helpful comments on previous versions of this paper, and Professor P. Korteweg for his open-minded attitude towards this research. Responsibility for the contents remains, of course, with the author. Financial help, from the Stichting Bekker-La Bastide-Fonds and the Stichting A.A. van Beek-Fonds is gratefully acknowledged.     

Factors Driving Quality Standard Compliance in the Polish Dairy Sector

We construct a model to identify determinants of the diffusion rate of quality standards in a food chain. We argue that adoption decisions in the food chain are determined by farmers’ and processors’ economic considerations. Factors such as pricing behaviour, compliance costs and market structure are identified and discussed in the paper. The findings are used to test an econometric model utilizing data on Polish milk processing firms gathered between 2000 and 2002. The results indicate that input and output prices have a significant influence on the diffusion rate of standards; the dominance of large-scale holdings in the relevant procurement market significantly increases diffusion as well. Compared to their competitors, small cooperatives were found to face more significant problems in procuring high quality raw materials.      

Human Capital Externalities and Proximity: Evidence from Repeated Cross-Sectional Data

Summary  Does schooling generate social returns in excess of the private returns captured by the individual who makes the human capital investment? As a strategy to detect human capital externalities I use Dutch survey data to estimate the impact of the average human capital stock in a region on individual wages, considering regional human capital as a local public good. Indeed, the regional fraction of high-skilled workers or the region’s average educational attainment appears with a positive and statistically significant coefficient in an augmented Mincer specification. However, the impact on individual wages completely vanishes when the firm’s human capital stock is included as an additional control. This may suggest that human capital externalities predominate within firms, though alternative explanations, in particular selection of high-skilled workers in high-productive companies and imperfect substitutability across skill groups, cannot be ruled out. I would like to thank two referees, Nicole Bosch, Theo van de Klundert, Pierre Koning, Rob Luginbuhl, Mauro Mastrogiacomo, Gabriela Schütz, Wouter Vermeulen, Dinand Webbink and seminar participants at the Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General of the European Commission, the NAKE Research Day 2007, the 64th Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance, and the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis for helpful comments, and Joke Goes, Jelte Haagsma and Judith Hoeben for their help with the data. Views expressed are my own, and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the European Commission or the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.     

The influence of debt management on the term-structure of interest rates

Summary This article focuses onthe influence of debt management on the term-structure of interest rates. Four theories are discussed which try to explain the factors influencing the term-structure. It proved that the four theories could be distinguished according to three aspects which have been investigated by means of analysis of variance and of the estiamtion of two reduced form equations with Dutch data during the period 1950 through 1973. It could be concluded that the liquidity preference theory and to a smaller extent the preferred habitat theory fitted the data relatively well. From this it followed that the influence of debt management on the term-structure of interest rates is rather small. This article is an elaboration of a paper written at the end of the author’s study at Groningen State University. He thanks Dr. S. K. Kuipers, Mr. P. W. Otter and Mr. B. S. Wilpstra, all connected with the Groningen State University, for their advice during the writing of the paper. He also thanks Mr. A. van der Veen, who took care of all the calculation which was necessary for the elaboration. He further thanks Dr. M. M. G. Fase for the comments he made on a previous version of this article. The author works at the Central Bureau of Statistics in The Hague.     

A model of real and financial household behaviour

Summary This paper shows that the traditional specification of the consumption function in Dutch macroeconometric models is unsatisfactory. In the traditional approach the fact that the consumption decision is taken simultaneously with financial decisions has been ignored. If both the consumption function and the asset demand equations are modelled simultaneously, then in the Dutch case financial stocks have influence on private consumption. Also it has been shown that the income concept is important in describing household behaviour. In a current income model short-term financial considerations are important in the consumption decision. In a permanent income model long-term financial considerations influence private consumption.The author would like to thank Professor Th. van de Klundert, Professor S.K. Kuipers, Mr. G.H. Kuper and Dr. N.S. Kroonenberg for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

The permanent income hypothesis,business cycles,and regime shifts: Evidence from eight countries

Summary We provide international evidence on the joint behavior of consumption and the real rate of interest and examine the rational expectations restrictions of the permanent income hypothesis. We extend the basic model to allow for independent effects of the stage of the business cycle or a regime shift after 1979. In our eight-country sample (using 1970s–1980s data) we find a small but internationally similar rate of intertemporal substitution once we allow for a regime shift affecting the average growth of consumption after 1979. The rational expectations restrictions are formally rejected, most prominently for the United Kingdom and Japan.We thank Ivo Arnold, Eduard Bomhoff, Fanz Palm, Peter Schotman, Carlo Winder, and anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are of course our own.