On the demographic realism of the Ricardian theory of public finance

Summary The possibility of public debt-neutrality is discussed for countries experiencing demographic changes. The heterogeneity of agents plays a decisive role in destroying Ricardian equivalence of public finance. In addition to the usual explanatory factors of non-neutrality, such as distortionary taxation, public debt is not equivalent to current taxation as a consequence of (1) disconnected dynasties, (2) uncertain lifetimes, (3) diverging birth rates, (4) international migration, (5) population growth uncertainty, (6) diverging rates of time preference, and (7) capital market imperfections. The paper concludes that thepure Ricardian model of public finance serves a purpose as a standard of argument for the more realistic models of public finance.Comments by Gerbert Hebbink, Evert van Imhoff, Herman Vollebergh and members of the Department of Public Finance are gratefully acknowledged.     

Eye-Tracking im Einzelhandel - Ein Leitfaden für die Blickaufzeichnung

Die Frage, welche Artikel wo im Regal platziert werden sollten, l?sst sich nicht allein mit Abverkaufsdaten beantworten. Vielmehr gilt es zu untersuchen, wie sich Kunden vor dem Regal verhalten und wie sie die Warenplatzierungen wahrnehmen. Ein Instrument dafür ist das Eye-Tracking. Die Blickaufzeichnung erlaubt es, das Such- und Orientierungsverhalten am Regal mit den Augen der Kunden zu sehen. Um aussagekr?ftige Ergebnisse aus einer Eye-Tracking-Studie zu erhalten, sind bestimmte Anforderungen zu erfüllen. Ein Leitfaden.     

How Likely are Employers to Rehire Older Workers After Mandatory Retirement? A Vignette Study Among Managers

With a vignette experiment among Dutch managers we examine employers’ considerations in the decision to rehire employees after mandatory retirement. We specifically focus on the effects of the employee’s downward wage flexibility (i.e., the willingness to accept a lower wage) and contract flexibility (i.e., preference for a contract which allows flexible hours or employment). The results show that employers are strongly affected by employees who offer to work for a significantly lower wage, but not by the employees’ preference for a particular labor contract. Employers are overall quite disinclined to rehire employees after mandatory retirement, although large differences exist between employees. Part of these differences can be explained by employers having higher retirement age norms (i.e., the maximum age at which employers consider employees suited for work in their organization).     

The Incidence of EU Per‐Hectare Payments on Farmland Rental Rates: A Spatial Econometric Analysis of German Farm‐Level Data

This article analyses determinants for 2001 farmland rental prices from 3,819 farms in Germany. Based on specification tests we estimate a general spatial model to account for both spatial relationships among rental prices of neighbouring farmers and spatially autocorrelated error terms. A €1 per hectare higher rental price in a farmer’s neighbourhood coincides with a €0.72 higher rental price paid by the farmer. The marginal incidence of EU per‐hectare payments paid for eligible arable crop land on rental rates amounts to €0.38 for each additional €1 of premium payments. Regional livestock density, which is indirectly influenced by different policies, is also a major determinant of rental prices. Results are confirmed by sensitivity analyses. Consequently, German farmland rental rates are heavily influenced by agricultural policy instruments and therefore, these policies exhibit substantial distributional effects.     

Customer Touchpoints im stationären Einzelhandel — Potenzial von Pervasive Computing

Je mehr individuelle Leistungen die Kunden verlangen, desto mehr Informationen ben?tigen die Anbieter. W?hrend die H?ndler im Distanzgesch?ft über personalisierte Daten ihrer Kunden und vor allem im Online-Shop über Bewegungsdaten verfügen, hat der station?re Einzelhandel noch erhebliche Datenlücken. Diese Lücken kann man mit einer Pervasive-Computing-Umgebung schlie?en. Neue Customer Touchpoints liefern Informationen darüber, wer bei ihm einkauft und wie der Einkauf durchgeführt wird.     

Greasing the Wheels of Trade: A Profile of the Dutch Transaction Sector***

How many resources does a nation spend on transactions costs to ‘grease the wheels of trade’? To examine this question the Dutch economy is used as a case study. The Netherlands are known as a nation of traders and this image was derived in the seventeenth century from successes in long distance trade, shipping and financial innovations. Despite its historical background the trading sector has never been adequately measured. In this paper, we present a first attempt in measuring and describing the Dutch transaction sector. Measurement by means of occupational data points out that approximately 25% of Dutch workers is employed in transaction jobs, and 29% if one includes transport tasks. We make the case that traditional industrial sector categories overestimate the true transaction character of an economy. Traditional ‘trade’ sectors employed 13% of the workers in 1807 and 39 percent in 1998, but these figures conceal the fact that all organizations employ jobs which have transformation and transaction tasks. A counterfactual exercise suggests that the growth of the transaction sector share in employment over two centuries was not 200% but 42%.     

Robust planning: a new paradigm for demand chain planning

This paper proposes a new paradigm for tactical demand chain planning (DCP), called robust planning, based on risk assessment of the supply and demand chain. The concepts of supply chain management (SCM), and its extension demand chain management (DCM), have been at the center of much recent research. One of the reasons for this is that, over the last years, a significant number of information systems have emerged, which claim to support the concept. The paper argues that these systems mostly adopt a myopic view of planning, based on pure deterministic planning methods. It demonstrates that such an approach fails to coop with the considerable uncertainty of the planning information. The proposed robust planning paradigm is then introduced and its impact explained, using the well-known example of the beer game. It holds the promise of reducing the number of re-planning cycles, through a better characterization of the expected service level performance over a medium planning horizon. Finally, a case study will show the value of robust planning in a European chemical enterprise.