Disability benefit microsimulation models in the Netherlands

Disability rates in the Netherlands used to be among the highest in the world. In 2002 the number of disability recipients approached one million. However, since then the number of disability cases has dropped remarkably due to a number of policy changes, the last of which being the new 2006 disability insurance scheme. On the other hand, in recent years the number of beneficiaries in the special scheme dedicated to the young handicapped has increased rapidly.     

Competitiveness of the Euro Zone Manufacturing: A Panel Data Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to assess the main aspects involved in the competitiveness of manufacturing industries in the Euro zone area (EZ-12). To this end, we apply the generalized method of moments to a panel data error correction model. Our sample spans the period from 1970 to 2007, and our findings provide insight into the impact of manufacturing on the international competitiveness of European firms and industries. From the estimated magnitude of the relevant coefficients, we conclude that in the long run, a change in labor and capital compensation is not fully passed on to manufacturing growth, while an increase in the market power of the manufacturing sector will negatively affect its competitiveness.     

The Role of Monetary Policy in the New Keynesian Model: Evidence from Vietnam

This paper re-designs the New Keynesian model developed by Ireland (2004 Ireland, P. N. (2004). Technology shocks in the New Keynesian model. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(4), 923–936. doi: 10.1162/0034653043125158[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and then uses the Vietnamese data from January 1995 to December 2012 to estimate the model's parameters. The empirical results show that the State Bank of Vietnam had been more aggressive as well as more responsive to aggregate fluctuations in the period before August 2000 than in the latter period. Thus, this change in the policy stance could be a potential reason for the declining importance of monetary policy in generating movements in output growth, inflation, interest rate, and the output gap across the subsamples. Another notable finding is the dominant role of the cost-push shock in explaining fluctuations in inflation, interest rate, and the output gap, leading to a policy implication that more attention should be devoted to developing substitute and complement industries so as to mitigate negative effects of the cost-push shocks by reducing the degree of dependence on imports.     

Retirement Expectations and Satisfaction with Retirement Provisions

This paper investigates the relationship between subjective expectations regarding the replacement rate of income at retirement and several measures of pension satisfaction. We use panel data on Dutch employees, analyzed with fixed effects models, allowing for correlation between unobserved heterogeneity in satisfaction and optimism or pessimism in expectations. The level of the expected replacement rate is found to be positively related to satisfaction: respondents who revise their expectations of the level of their replacement rate upwards tend to become more satisfied with their pension provisions, in particular with the level of the expected benefits. We do not find robust evidence for a relationship between uncertainty and pension satisfaction.     

Does Age Exacerbate the Gender-Wage Gap? New Method and Evidence From Germany, 1984–2014

ABSTRACT

Given theoretical premises, the gender-wage gap adjusted for individual characteristics is likely to vary according to age. This study adapts John DiNardo, Nicole M. Fortin, and Thomas Lemieux's (1996) semi-parametric technique to disentangle year, cohort, and age effects in adjusted gender-wage gaps. The study relies on a long panel of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) covering 1984–2015. The results indicate that, in Germany, the gender-wage gap increases over a birth cohort's lifetime, including in the post-reproductive age for some birth cohorts. The results suggest that age and gender are overlapping handicaps in the labor market and call for a policy intervention.     

Mapping EORTC-QLQ-C30 to EQ-5D-3L in patients with colorectal cancer

Aims: The primary aim of this study was to perform a mapping of the EORTC-QLQ-C30 scores to EQ-5D-3L for the SIRFLOX study; a large dataset of patients with previously untreated liver-only or liver-dominant metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). A secondary aim was to compare the predictive validity of existing mappings from EORTC-QLQ-C30 to EQ-5D-3L conducted in other cancers.

Methods and materials: Questionnaires (completed within 529 patients) were used in a linear mixed regression to model EQ-5D-3L utility values (scored using the UK tariff) as a function of the five function scores, nine symptom scores, and the global score from the EORTC-QLQ-C30 questionnaire. A Tobit regression was also performed. The mean EQ-5D-3L values for the SIRFLOX trial were calculated and compared with predicted EQ-5D-3L values derived using published mapping algorithms.

Results: The linear mixed regression model provided a satisfactory mapping between the EORTC-QLQ-C30 and the EQ-5D-3L, whilst the Tobit model did not perform as well. When utilities from the SIRFLOX data were calculated with previously published mapping studies, three out of five studies performed well (< 10% mean difference).

Limitations: The main limitation of the study was the lack of meaningful observations post-progression (67 paired observations). For this reason, this study was unable to test whether the mapping holds by disease stage. Additionally, although the study adds to the literature of mappings to the EQ-5D-3L, it is not known how results would differ using the EQ-5D-5L.

Conclusion: This study is the first of its kind in liver-only or liver-dominant mCRC, and mCRC in general. The mapping constructed showed a good fit to the data and provides practitioners with an additional mapping between EORTC-QLQ-C30 to EQ-5D-3L using a large dataset (529 patients, 707 paired observations). The study also confirmed the generalizability of mappings published by Proskorovsky, Kontodimopoulos, and Longworth to liver-only or liver-dominant mCRC.     

The potential of participatory hybrid breeding

This article explores the potential of involving smallholder farmers in hybrid development for their low-external input farming systems. We have developed a conceptual model of the procedures, based on five assumptions: (a) the hybrids are bred for adaptation to local needs and preferences; (b) the dependence on and need for genetic diversity is taken into account; (c) breeders collaborate closely with farmers also in the initial stages of the breeding programme, that is, in establishing the breeding goals by identifying the desired traits and preferred local populations as (one of the) crossing parents; (d) hybrid seed production can be integrated into the farmers’ local seed system; and (e) farmers and breeders can agree on intellectual property rights, access and benefit sharing in a fair and transparent way. We illustrate the procedural consequences of these assumptions with reference to the case of a participatory maize breeding programme in southwest China, from 2000 to 2012, that included both open-pollinated and hybrid maize improvement. We show how farmers’ early involvement in hybrid development during the pre-breeding stage, including broadening the base populations with farmer-maintained local landraces, can support co-evolution of the genetic resources in farmers’ fields.